Raise your hand if you're married. Raise your hand if,
while engaged, you registered for a pasta maker. Now, raise your hand if that
pasta maker is still in its box, unopened and unused. Yeah, that was me until
about a month ago when I learned how easy it is to make delicious, homemade,
from scratch, organic and possibly totally local pasta.
All you need to make a basic pasta dough is about 4 cups
of flour and 5 eggs. If you want to make vegan pasta, you can use mineral water
instead of flour. You'll also need a pasta press unless you're really good with a
rolling pin (which I'm not). Put 3 cups (1 pound exactly if you have a kitchen
scale) in a large, wide mixing bowl and make a crater in the middle. Put all 5
eggs in the crater and beat with a fork until you can't anymore and have to use
your hands to knead it together. The dough won't be uniform and that's fine.
Get a bunch of extra flour in a pile. I suggest using a SilPat or clean your
counter super well. Take a small handful of dough and knead it a bit. Set your
pasta press to 1 and run the dough through. Flour both sides, food it once,
then run it through again. Do this 4-5 times or until the dough is uniform
looking and doesn't stick to the rollers. Then roll it once at a level 3 then
once at a level 5 or 6.
Now you've got dough you can do a lot with. You can cut it
in squares and make ravioli, run it through a vermicelli or linguini cutter, or
cut in long strips for lasagna. Once you've cut your pasta, lay it out on some clean towels to dry for at least an hour:
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| The raviolis laid out to dry. |
For my ravioli, I took a cup of kale, several
mushrooms and 4-5 tablespoons of Parmesan and food processed them. That made
about 14 2x2 raviolis which were delicious.
So pull that pasta maker out, get some fresh local eggs,
and get rolling!
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| About 4 2x2 raviolis plus some veggies and crusty bread was more than enough for dinner! |
