A rainbow of pasta for dinner. Linda Nicholson, aka Salty Seattle, creates a variety of brightly colored pasta dishes without any artificial flavors, as demonstrated in this Tasty video.
The colors are made from the following ingredients: Butterfly pea flowers or Blue Majik spirulina for blue, dragonfruit and blueberry for purple, beets and harissa for a red, harissa or paprika for orange, turmeric root for yellow, and parsley with a pinch of turmeric for green. A pasta machine helps her cut it up and press it back together, but you can also manually cut and roll your colors into whatever combinations you choose. Plus, from her FAQs: Is cooked pasta still vibrant?
It depends. If you are making pasta and you want to ensure that the color is vibrant after cooking, sheet it very thin so that you don’t have to boil it for long. The shorter the amount of time the pasta is in the water, the better the color will hold. Since the color comes from vegetables, it is also more nutritionally beneficial to boil for less time. Another thing to consider is the age of the noodles. If you’re able to boil pasta within a few hours of making it, it’ll cook more quickly. Some colors stay bright more than others. If you want a vibrant finished dish, use activated charcoal, spinach, parsley, turmeric root, harissa, or butterfly pea flowers.
In the tutorial video below, Nicholson demonstrates how she blends bright vegetables, herbs, and superfoods into her pasta dough:
Salty Seattle’s work is on Instagram and she has a book coming out in October 2018: Pasta, Pretty Please. Pair the video above with this educational demo video from Bon Appétit: How to Make 29 Handmade Pasta Shapes With 4 Types of Dough.
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