The first is nutrition: pasta enriched with dried moringa leaf powder has significantly more protein, iron, calcium, magnesium, along with more Vitamin A, E and K, and fiber than regular pasta.
The second issue is environmental: Over three billion people—nearly half the World's population—eat meals cooked on fires of wood, charcoal, crop residues, and dried animal dung. The "three-stone cooking fires" and traditional stoves without chimneys are very inefficient and very smoky. Globally, indoor air pollution from cooking is the single greatest environmental health factor. It causes lung disease, cancers, and eye damage mainly to the women who do the bulk of the cooking and the children they care for. Gathering firewood is a physically exhausting and dangerous task for millions of women. Growing demand for cooking wood and charcoal is a major factor in deforestation.
Leaf–enriched pasta cooks very quickly (7 minutes in boiling water) compared to beans that usually cook for 1-3 hours. Obviously, this could reduce the need for cooking fuel and lessen some health and environmental problems. A lot of great work has been done promoting low-cost solar cookers and energy-efficient cookstoves, but fast-cooking high nutrition foods could also play an important role in resolving this problem.
The third issue that leaf-enriched pasta could help address is that more women are working and have less time for preparing meals. Convenience foods, like instant ramen noodles, are increasingly replacing traditional meals based on grains and beans. This is partially responsible for the growing "double burden" of obesity and micronutrient deficiencies in children.
Not only is leaf-enriched pasta nutritious and quick-cooking, but kids who often don't like eating leafy greens, generally enjoy leaf-enriched pasta. Plus, when it is dried and well-sealed it can keep for a year.
So much for why to make green pasta. Now on to how.
Start with 4 cups bread flour or all-purpose flour, 1 cup dried green leaf powder, and 1 cup water. You can use almost any edible leaves that are dried and finely ground or powdered. We recommend this 4:1 ratio because 20% of dried leaf powder is about the most we can add without altering the texture and flavor too much. Of course, some are much more nutritious than others. Whole wheat flour mixed with the leaf powder generally results in pasta that doesn't hold together well. If you are looking for gluten-free pasta, there are some recipes on the Internet that you could probably add the leaf powder to. There is no gluten in any of the leaf powders.
Mix them together thoroughly. You may need a bit more water, depending on how dry the flour and leaf powder are. Add it very cautiously as it is easy to make your pasta dough too wet.
Knead the dough for at least 5 minutes, 10 is better. Pasta dough is much dryer than bread dough. It should feel heavy but elastic. If it is too wet, the pasta will stick together and make a big mess. It's more art than science and it usually takes a few tries to get the hang of it.
After kneading, form the dough into balls a bit larger than ping pong or golf balls. Flatten the balls with your hands or a rolling pin.
The next directions are for using a small manual pasta machine. Some methods for people without the pasta machine will follow. The small manual pasta machines usually cost between $40-75 US online or at gourmet cooking shops. We recommend the Marcato Atlas and Imperia brand Italian made machines.
Clamp the machine to a sturdy table or counter. You can adjust how far apart the rollers are. Start with them at the widest setting (on this machine ‘1'). Roll the flattened dough through the widest setting then fold it in half and do it again. Repeat this two or three times. Then begin rolling the sheet of dough through the rollers bringing the rollers closer together after each pass. Most pasta machines have 6-8 thickness settings. You can usually skip some of them, going from the widest to the narrowest in 3 or 4 settings. So you could roll the dough sheet through on setting 1, setting 3, setting 5, and finally setting 7. Stopping one setting before the finest (6 instead of 7) will make pasta that takes a bit longer to cook or to dry but will hold up better without breaking if it is going to be dried for later use.
After you roll your sheets as thin as you like, trim them to a reasonable length. Next, change the handle to the cutter attachment and then roll them through the cutter. Most machines have 2 cutters; one for fettuccine (about ¼ inch wide) and one for spaghetti (about 1/16 inch wide). The fettuccine is not as fragile as the spaghetti, which is important if you are drying it.
Try to crank the sheet through the cutter rollers as smoothly as possible, catching it on the back of your hand as it comes through. Then hang the freshly cut spaghetti over the dowel or bamboo on the drying rack. For social programs and micro-enterprises, a larger (and more expensive) version of the pasta machine is available from Imperia. The process of rolling and cutting the pasta sheets is basically the same on the larger machine.
To make a simple, yet effective drying rack; cut 45-degree angles on both ends of 2 identical sticks about 4 feet long. Drive a nail into the sticks every 6 inches or so. You don't need nails so close to one end that the pasta would hang on the floor. After all the nails are in place set the two sticks against a wall about 3 feet apart. Put a brick or a rock in front of each stick so they don’t slide. Then drape the freshly cut pasta over ½ inch dowels or smooth bamboo. Start hanging the pasta and add dowels or bamboo as needed.
The pasta will usually dry within 24 hours. You will know that it is dry when it snaps instead of bending. Spaetzle dries quickly and easily on the solar leaf dryer. (See "How to Make a Solar Dryer.") We don’t recommend drying raviolis or empanadas, as their fillings are likely to spoil before they are fully dried.
With some patience, pasta can be made without a machine, but it is quite a bit of work and the results will be less uniform. The first steps are the same; mix 4 cups flour, one cup green leaf powder, and one cup water. Then knead well and form into balls. Flatten the balls with your hand and then roll the dough as thin as you can with a rolling pin or a bottle.
Trim the sheet of dough to make it as rectangular as possible. Next, use a straight edge and a sharp knife to slice the dough into strips on a cutting board. Use the knife to lift the strips and then hang them on the drying rack. A broom handle or pipe between two chairs will work if you are only making a small amount.
Whether the pasta is fresh or dried, the noodles can be easily slid off the dowels or bamboo into rapidly boiling water. Cook the pasta and then drain it after about 7 minutes.
Another thing you can do with the pasta sheets, whether they rolled by hand or by machine, is to make ravioli or empanadas. Many cultures have variations on this theme of a bit of meat or cheese or beans wrapped in a sheet of dough and then steamed, boiled or fried. Momos in Tibet and dim sum in Korea are a couple of examples. Because they are made in various sizes and with different fillings, you’ll need to experiment a bit to get a sense of how long to cook them.
To make ravioli cut circles in a pasta sheet with a small canning jar lid, or something similar. They hold up better if you make the sheet slightly thicker than you would for fettuccine. Then put a heaping teaspoon of your filling (we are using bean paste here) in the middle of a disc and cover it with another one. Seal the ravioli by pressing a fork all around the edge.
An alternative method, used in Honduras, is to start with a larger disc of pasta dough, place a tablespoonful of filling in the middle and fold it over. The edge of this half-circle is then sealed with a fork.
The easiest way to make leaf-enriched pasta doesn't require rolling the dough flat. It is a variation on the German food "spaetzle". A very firm ball of pasta dough is grated through a cheese grater. This can be done directly into a pot of boiling soup or broth and the little shavings of pasta cook almost instantly, adding body and a lot of nutrition to simple soups. They can also be cooked separately and served with butter or dried for later use.
One of the things we like most about pasta is that it is fun to make with kids. We can make it with different colors; green from leaves; red from dried beet powder; yellow from turmeric, for example. It is like an edible Playdoh. Kids can draw pictures of their dog or house on the pasta sheet or make tie-dye or rainbow or Salvador Dali pasta.
It is a good way to introduce leaf-enriched pasta in a program and kids are usually more enthusiastic about eating pasta that they know how to make. This is true with adults as well. These college students are studying international public health. They made leaf-enriched pasta at a Leaf for Life workshop and are eating the product of their labor for supper. Very hands-on learning and many came back for seconds.
Green pasta is also well-suited for micro-enterprise projects. This women's' cooperative in a Brazilian shantytown is making leaf enriched pasta to sell with a larger version of the hand-cranked pasta machine. Unlike many nutritionally fortified breads, drinks, and yogurt, the leaf enriched pasta doesn't need to be refrigerated. Because it keeps for up to a year once it is well dried, the women aren't under great time pressure to sell their product.
If it becomes more popular more parents could pull out a bag and make a super-nutritious meal for their family in almost no time at all.
Thanks for watching.
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