Pasta making 101
What does making homemade pasta got to do with gardening? Nothing! But a gardener’s got to do something in the dead of winter and I wanted to try out that new pasta machine that I got for a birthday gift in June. I thought it would be a great compliment to my homemade spaghetti sauce that I canned last Fall from all those tomatoes I grew. Lava, Elodie and myself are the ‘chefs’ that made it happen. We did many things wrong and it still turned out great!
Trying to keep the well from breaking..
First mix flour (preferably Tipo 00 Italian flour which is finer that regular flour) with some eggs. Your suppose to put the flour on a board and pile it up and make a well in the center of the flour (like mash potatoes and gravy) and crack the eggs in the well being careful not to break the well. Of course the well broke and it was a mess mixing it together. We had to add more water than the recipe called for because it wasn’t mixing very well but finally it looked somewhat like dough after kneading for awhile. Then we put plastic wrap on it and let it rest for 20-30 minutes. After that we cut it in half. It looked great! What a surprise! We then put a quarter of the doughball through the machine which eventually makes for very long pieces. We ran it through the 1st setting 5 times, each time folding it in thirds and then rerunning it through again. After 5 times, we started setting the machine at #2 setting and then the #three and so forth until we tighten it to setting #6. Each time it would get longer and longer and thinner and thinner, eventually reaching about 2 feet long. After that we ran it through the machine where it cuts the pasta into linguine or spaghetti shaped long strands. We cut the finished pieces in half to not be so long (I imagined slurping up a two foot long piece of linguine in my mouth). Finally we put it on a clean floured dishtowel to dry for about 30 minutes. Just enough time to heat the sauce and have a glass of wine! Lots of fun and it tasted great! Here is a quick slide show.
giantveggiegardener 