Soooo, I've been to a few cooking classes lately where we were shown how to make pasta. Truth be told, at the first class I kinda zoned out thinking "as IF I am EVER EVER EVER going to make Pasta. EVER"! During the second class we had a chance to jump in and get our hands dirty and I thought "hey, perhaps this isn't so hard after all".
So I rushed right out and bought myself a pasta machine. Meet "Jamie"! Isn't he HANDSOME!
I was told by my husband that I was NOT to make pasta whilst he was in the house (we had a traumatic "baking incident" {there were tears, mine} a few years ago and he had visions of me having a similar pasta-related meltdown in the kitchen). This weekend he left the state and the coast was clear for me to whip Jamie and of his box and give him a whirl around the kitchen.
Every pasta recipe I've ever seen has been different - no two are alike. The ones from the two classes were both quite different to each other so I went back to my trusty Australian Women's Weekly cookbook as it seemed to be the most simple recipe on the planet. We got this book two years ago for our wedding, but I've really only started cracking it open in the last few months - as I become more interested in learning the basics of cooking.
The ingredients are pretty simple - just 2 cups of super fine flour, 3 eggs (free range of course) and 2 teaspoons of salt. I combined the flour + salt in a bowl and made a "well" for the eggs and then brought the whole lot together with my "magic" fingers. The mix was a bit dry so I added a tad of warm water into the mix and an extra egg...totally freestyling.
Once the mix comes together into a dough ball (technical term) you have to knead it until it becomes "smooth and elastic". To be honest I could've kneaded my dough ball for a 1000 years and it still wouldn't have been smooth or elastic so I wrapped it up in some Glad Wrap after about 10 minutes of fondling and bunged it in the fridge for about 10 minutes.
Hmmm, so I have to say that Jamie really didn't come to the party when I came to rolling out my dough. For the first few goes through the machine everything was going GREAT - making pasta was EASY! It was as the dough got thinner and thinner that Jamie and I really came to blows. I mean LOOK at the mess below? What the heck is going on Jamie? Why are you betraying me like this - I LOVED you. Let's just say half the dough ended up in the bin.
I was later told by some of my twitter friends that the dough was probably getting a bit moist so was sticking to the rollers - next time I should dust the sheets with flour each time it goes through the machine.
Finally - after about 27 years (or an hour or so) I managed to get a few sheets of nice, not smooshed, pasta. Jamie has a fettuccine attachment so I whipped my perfect sheet of pasta through and VIOLA - fettuccine.
I didn't hang the pasta up to dry so it kind of all clumped together in a big Fettuccine Ball but I ate it anyway...with a splash of olive oil, a clove of garlic, salt, pepper and some parsley from my garden.
Wow - that was an EFFORT! Thank goodness I have Latina pasta in the freezer for the next time I need a carb hit.
Thanks to Celia from Fig Jam and Lime Cordial for hosting this blog hop. Check out what everyone else is up to in their kitchens this month --> here!
