Homemade Pasta!

This past Monday, the pasta rollers for my KitchenAid mixer were delivered. Tuesday night, I made my first every batch of fresh pasta. And yes, what "they" say is true--fresh pasta beats dry, store-bought pasta by miles. Partially, it's the satisfaction of watching eggs and flour come together in light, ribbony noodles, but it also just tastes better. Fresher.

I used a recipe from Mario Batali (3.5 c of flour to 5 eggs, but found I needed to add 2 more) from his book Molto Italiano. After kneading the dough for 10 minutes (which, when you're kneading dough is a looooong time), you let it rest for 30 minutes, cut into 4 pieces and you're ready to roll.

Seriously, the pasta rollers make it ridiculously easy. Once we got the hang of it (the speed of the rollers, ideal pasta width), we were off to the races.

First, we rolled it out into sheets of increasing thinness:

And then, once the pasta sheet was the desired thickness, we flipped to the fettuccine attachment:
When the pasta is cut, we spread it out on towels to let it dry just a touch. At this stage, you can let the pasta dry almost all the way out and then store in an airtight bag, or you can coil the pasta into "birdnests" and store in the freezer. Gently drop the desired amount of pasta into boiling water and cook for about 3 minutes:
Toss with pasta sauce of your choice, or just a little butter, parmesean and S&P (In this case, I used sauce that I made from this summer's tomatoes and had kept in the freezer) and you're good to go.

Seriously, it was incredibly easy and incredibly fun. If you have a stand mixer, I totally recommend getting the pasta attachments. Sure, it requires a little bit more time and effort, but the result is completely worth it and the process itself is entertaining. Now, I plan to revisit the butternut squash ravoli and redeem myself after THAT debacle...


Comments

Nan said…
Nice work, Gen. You can make that for me anytime.
January 30, 2009 at 1:10 PM
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