A birthday present… PASTA!
So as an absolutely fabulous birthday present my wife and immediate family all chipped in to get me this Atlas pasta maker. We picked it up at the best place in Nashville for fine teas and cookware, Davis Cookware & Cutlery Shop. Then I had the privilege of going over to my new friends’ house to make pasta for the first time with a hands-on lesson. It turns out that while it’s a little bit of work, it’s not at all difficult to do.
So one night later, I tried it on my own for the very first time.
1. To start with I only needed about a cup of flour and one egg for each adult served.
2. You beat the eggs together in a medium sized bowl and then add most but not all of the flour to it, mixing it until it begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.
3. Then you can begin to knead it by hand until it forms a ball of dough. It doesn’t have to be perfectly mixed and kneaded at this point and is great if it still has some dry spots.
4. Divide the dough into fist size balls
5. Form each ball into something resembling a hamburger patty and feed it into the pasta roller as you crank the handle. What comes out looks like a thick lasagna noodle that looks kinda rough on the surface.
6. Fold each side in towards the middle making a folded noodle and feed it back through the rollers, dusting slightly with flour from time to time to keep from getting too sticky. This is repeated 6 or 7 times until the strips of dough get very smooth and even.
7. Then take the rolled pieces and feed it back through the rollers, gradually decreasing the width between the rollers to thin out the dough a step at a time.
8. Once the dough looks thin enough, move the crank handle to the part of the machine that cuts the noodles and re-feed the dough into the cutter.
9. Out comes perfectly formed pasta.
10. Place into a pot of rolling boiling water and cook for 2-3 minutes. Drain and serve. We tossed the noodles with a bit of sauce to keep them from sticking.
11. Eat to your heart’s content. Yum. You can use All Purpose Flour for this but we used freshly ground hard white flour, found in most stores as King Arthur’s White Whole Wheat. Another great resource is Beard on Pasta, a book all about the joys of pasta making by the bread guru himself, James Beard.
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What an awesome birthday present!!! That sounds right up your alley. And I absolutely LOVE this blog. I think it is so great how you two have morphed into this wonderful couple who loves to cook wholesome, nutritious, and delicious foods for your family. And not only that, but you have a passion to share them with everyone you know, even your friend who moved halfway across the country and misses you very much. Keep posting new recipes. I love them!!!
Think you can talk Jason into an interest in this? I’m not sure I have the patience for this process… Maybe you can just invite me over for dinner. I’ll happily make the most elaborate side dish and dessert you can request!
oh my aching platypus! that looks like fun!!
Oh my goodness! I want a pasta maker so bad! Do you love it???
Um, my husband loves the pasta maker and I love the pasta. It’s totally his passion, not mine, but it works out well for the whole family!