Pasta From Scratch, No Problemo!

When a good friend recently offered to have myself and my BFF, Jeanne, over for a lesson in pasta making from scratch I was all too eagerly asking what time and what I could bring. I've always wanted to have a go at making my own as I've heard many tales of success and woe over the years from various people who have dared walk the pasta from scratch plank before. When we arrived she had all of the ingredients ready to go along with our pasta rollers and recipes for us to take with us. We were going to be making traditional pasta as well as cavatelli. I took pictures as we went and the recipes are below. Naturally, sip a bottle of wine of your choice, the obvious being a good Italian red-- my recommended three would be a Chianti, Montepulciano, or Valpolicella, as you go for the complete experience.

 

The great surprise here? I actually found this easy to do...which may be the case for folks across the globe but I was going in prepared for challenge and I have to say the outcome was more like Tricia: 1, Pasta: 0. The hardest and most tedious part for me was rolling the cavatelli. Apparently there's a machine out there that does the shaping for you and I must say I will be putting that on my 'things to buy' list shortly.

Let's start with the pasta. The ingredients here are simple, 2 cups of flour, 2 eggs, 1/2 tsp of salt and 1/8 cup of oil (olive or vegetable is fine) will get you a pound of pasta. Start with a large clean work surface and make the flour and salt into a mound with a well in the middle. In that well you're going to pour in your oil (just a little) and crack your eggs into it. Grab a fork and start mixing the eggs, similar to how you would for scrambled eggs and as you go work some of the flour in from the sides of the well. It's okay if you see some egg start to run out the sides, just work the flour around it to keep it contained (Jeanne struggled a bit here, thankfully no one was hurt). Once you have the eggs and a good amount of the flour incorporated, drop the fork and use your hands to knead and work the dough into a ball. Get aggressive here, it takes a lot of beating up on this dough and it will feel dry but that's normal (if still really dry after a lot of working add a little water, just a splash).

 

Once you have it into a ball cover it with a bowl and let it rest for 30 minutes. If you're making cavatelli the same day, now would be a good time to get started on that. Cavatelli is similar in texture to gnocchi, so it goes best with a light marinara or similar as it's heavier than traditional pasta. As I mentioned, rolling these little suckers out so that they curl the way they're supposed to did not go well for me, so consider yourself warned.

You'll need one pound of full fat ricotta cheese, 1/3 cup milk, 1 egg, 1 tsp salt and 4 cups of flour. You're going to drop your ricotta onto your work surface and then add the flour (start with 3 cups, you'll work the 4th cup in in just a bit)...work that together and then form a mound with a well as you did for the pasta. Drop your egg and milk into the middle and get to working it all together (use the same aggression as above!).

You'll notice this is much more wet than the pasta dough, so work in that 4th cup of flour as needed. Once you have your dough incorporated and formed into something that resembles a round shape, cut off pieces about the size of a piece of biscotti, and then roll those pieces into a snake that's about the size of a nickel in diameter. Use a butter knife to cut that snake into 1/2" long pieces that will be your cavatelli. This is when you want to use your fingers to flatten and roll that piece of dough until it curls onto itself, so that it looks like the picture below (actually, as these are ours and it was our first time your better reference might be to Google a pic...or just get that damn machine!) The wine came in really handy here. Once you've formed all of your dough, lay out the cavatelli on a flat surface to let them dry out some.

 

Now, back to the pasta! Uncover your ball and cut into pieces similar to what you did to make your cavatelli. These pieces are going to be run through your pasta roller, on the widest setting to start (different machines have different settings, so be sure to read your manual here). Run it through once, then fold it half and run it through again, then do that a third time. Now you're ready to run it through on a smaller setting (depending on what kind of pasta and how think you want it) just one time. As you run the dough through and lay them onto your work surface flour them just a little on the tops. Finally, run the pieces through a smaller setting (on my machine I started with setting 8, then 6, then 4 for my last) one time.

 

I wanted fettuccine, so I used the wider cut on the machine, ran the pieces through and voila! Fettuccine is made!

 

Another little neat trick that our friend taught us was that you can add some basil leaves or parsley (in the event you're making pasta for some soup or what have you) to a flat piece of the pasta dough, fold it in half and then run it through a smaller setting and the herb is embedded right into the pasta...pretty neat!

Lesson here? Well, there's a few. Most important is that homemade pasta is easy and can be done in a couple of hours at home. I froze mine as it will take me some time to go through a pound of pasta (especially considering I'm supposed to watch my gluten intake...whoops) so feel free to double or triple the recipe and do the same at home!

Bon appetito!

Trish