A Fancy Mother's day dessert:

Chocolate pasta with mocha sauce

There are many fancy sweets that I have tasted and made, but there is one so unique, that I can hardly compare it with any other. That dessert is chocolate pasta.
You need to have pasta maker to prepare it, but after creating it, I think anyone will agree that its a culinary masterpiece.
I heard about it a long time ago, but I never had a good and trusted recipe, until I got the "Cooking with the Seasons" cookbook from Jean-Louis Palladin. Here; I will provide his original recipe using mocha sauce, but I will also give you tips for an amaretti sauce which I have created instead.
This dessert would be royal surprise for anyone, for any occasion, including  today's Mother's day.

Recipe:

Pasta:
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tbsp + 1 tsp water
1 large egg
1 tsp vegetable oil
1/2 cup + 1 tbsp semolina flour
2 tbsp sugar
6-7 tbsp all purpose flour

Mocha sauce:
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup milk
1/4 cup freshly very finely ground espresso beans or 1/4 cup of instant coffee powder
3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
6 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar

4 l or 4quarts of water for cooking
1 tbsp vegetable oil for cooking pasta
100 g/3oz white chocolate for garnish

To make chocolate pasta:
I used less flour than the recipe called for -it's important to adjust it while mixing the dough.
In a small bowl dissolve cocoa with water and set aside. In the other bowl, mix together the egg, oil, semolina and sugar, and beat it until soft, either by hand or in a mixer bowl. Add the dissolved cocoa and flour 1 tbsp at time, to get a smooth and elastic dough. Let it rest for about an hour.

Split the dough in two pieces and run trough a thickest setting on your pasta machine for about ten times, until the final dough is smooth. Then run from the thickest to the thinnest setting and occasionally lightly flour the dough so it doesn't stick.  Attach the linguine attachment and run dough through it. Dust the noodles lightly with flour and let them rest or hang them to dry if you plan to cook them later.

Cooking pasta:
Combine water and oil and boil. Add noodles and cook for about 2 minutes and drain.

Making sauce:
In a saucepan combine cram, milk, coffee,and cocoa, and bring to a boil. Set aside. In the other bowl whisk egg yolks and sugar and add in a saucepan. Blend together and bring back to the stove. Heat while whisking constantly so it doesn't boil for few minutes until sauce thickens.

To serve:
Put 1/4 of the warm noodles on a plate and spoon over the hot chocolate sauce (3-4 tbsp) and garnish over with shaved white chocolate.



My amaretti twist:
Add a few drops of natural almond extract to the mocha sauce and instead of using white chocolate as the garnish, grind a few tbsp of roasted almonds over the pasta.