Fresh Pasta

I haven’t been able to get into the kitchen to cook lately, hopefully more of that will happen later this week. Luckily, I do have a post on fresh pasta ready!

It was another payday dinner that we decided to make fresh pasta. I’ve always wanted to make my own pasta, but hadn’t felt all that confident about it until I saw it on this blog and figured that if she could do it, I wouldn’t screw it up too badly! I actually used Jamie Oliver’s recipe from Jamie at home.

Fresh Pasta – Adapted from Jamie at home

• 4 Large free-range or organic eggs
• 2 cups all-purpose flour (and extra for dusting

Crack the eggs into the bowl of a food processor and add the flour. Whiz it up and listen for the sound to change to a rumble -this means the dough is coming together nicely. Turn the power off and test the dough by pinching it. If it’s sticky, add more flour and pulse again.

Turn dough out onto a floured surface and shape it into a ball with your hands. Give it a little knead until smooth, and divide your dough into 4 equal parts. Start on the thickest setting of your pasta machine and run the first bit through 4 or 5 times moving the rollers closer together until the pasta is silky and smooth and the thickness of a cd. Flour the sheet generously and cut as desired.

We actually used the linguine setting on the cutters that came with my pasta machine, and then let them dry on a pasta rack we made out of broomsticks!

We cooked the pasta is salted boiling water, and it took no more than 5 minutes for it to get al dente. (Probably more like 3 minutes, but I was being cautious) I made up two separate sauces for the pasta, since my Scott is so picky. He hates tomato sauce on pasta. We made a quick fontina cheese sauce, and a tomato-basil as well. I will however, leave those recipes for another post!

(I apologize for the poor picture quality… I was only trying to capture them for posterity, I didn’t plan on blogging with them at the time!)