UMBC Chartwells Chef shows students, families how to make fresh pasta

Tara Fitzpatrick

This past school year, good old Sunday suppers brought students, their parents and the dining team together in a special way at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, through a series of a dozen virtual and in-person teaching kitchens.

“We chose Sunday evening as a perfect time to get the family together and share a meal, on campus or with the entire family at home,” says UMBC’s Chartwells Higher Ed Campus Executive Chef Tim Dunn.

Parents who signed up were able to Zoom into the onsite teaching kitchen, where Dunn walks everyone through recipes with major homemade vibes. Recently, Dunn demonstrated to students and families how to make fresh pasta, tomato sauce and meatballs, one of those simple, comfort-food meals that truly gets elevated when it’s made with this level of care.

Photo: UMBC’s Chartwells Higher Ed Campus Executive Chef Tim Dunn says the wackiest taco he’s made has got to be “spaghetti tacos. They were a big hit.”

Each attendee received a shopping list beforehand, and on-campus students picked up ingredient packs at a dining hall. Combining live-action and Zoom “makes the class interactive fun, and full of great conversations for all,” Dunn says.

When talking pasta making, the topic of flour inevitably comes up. There’s the question of which type is flour is best?

“I’ve always used semolina flour, a traditional ingredient for pasta,” Dunn says. “It’s not as finely ground as double-zero flour, a little harder, which means it’s coarser and has larger particles than double-zero. Using hard flour, like semolina, will allow your pasta to maintain its shape better—think rigatoni or penne—and gives it that traditional yellow look. Double-zero flour is great in pasta making if you’re making softer pasta like tagliatelle or ravioli, where holding the shape isn’t as important.”

Chef Tim Dunn plates the scratch-made pasta. Fresh pasta is part of special teaching kitchen events like this one, and it also shows up in culinary pop-ups.

For this class, Dunn had the attendees make egg noodles “for time purposes and ease,” he says. He instructed the class to roll out the dough and then cut it into long, thin noodles, which can be cut to any desired width, from wispy angel hair to wide pappardelle.

As part of the regular dining program, fresh pasta makes an appearance in culinary pop-ups, but dried pasta is around on lots of campus menus. Dunn says his surroundings have inspired him to take pasta in a very East Coast direction: seafood.

“Being right outside of Baltimore, I’ve always found it more enjoyable to work with seafood,” he says. Recently, he made a cinnamon-pecan encrusted soft shell crab over pappardelle noodles and an Old Bay fra diavolo roasted tomato sauce.

Dunn also does something unique with noodles: he fries them in a chinois after cooking them to make them “nice and crunchy,” he says. “I often use this method to make a crunch element for salads. If you use gluten-free pasta, you won’t miss your croutons. Recently, I made kimchi and shrimp salad with a fried pasta.”