Inspired by my latest favouritist blog, The Art of Doing Stuff<\/a>, I made pasta for the first time today. And, oh yay, it was spectacularly great tasting despite the ineptness of the pasta maker. <\/p>\n Beginning with, How to make pasta dough<\/a>, I made one substitution and used semolina instead of regular flour. Working with two eggs, it did not take long to mix and kneading was a breeze. I even made use of a wood board we’d been given by Mutti many moons ago. The final dough ball just looked just like the piture at the bottom of the instructions.<\/p>\n While the dough rested, I set up my pasta machine. I purchased the machine a while ago at a local garage sale for a couple of dollars and this was its first outing in this house. I had to set up on the dining table as the counter top in our decrepit kitchen was too wide to clamp the machine to. I laid down some parchment paper to protect both the wood table top and the pasta.<\/p>\n The instructions, How to use a pasta machine,<\/a> were easy to follow, though it turns out my machine counts from 8 down and I found levels 2 and 1 so super fine it was impossible to stop the pasta ribbon from tearing. The cutting rollers worked a treat and I used the wide setting since this was my first attempt and that seemed easier to deal with. <\/p>\n Fresh pasta, it turns out, really likes to stick to itself so my ribbons of pasta began to clump up before I realised what was happening. (So next time I’ll spread the lengths out after I’ve cut them.) Nevertheless I dumped my pile of pasta into some boiling water for about 4 minutes. <\/p>\n For sauce we winged it. We both used a little extra virgin olive oil. Nic then added some fresh parmesan while I added a little salt and freshly ground pepper.<\/p>\n It was way delish!<\/p>\n I will definitely do this again plus I’m now super keen to put my ravioli cutters to good use.<\/p>\n Current temperature: here 34F\/1C, there 2C\/36F<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Inspired by my latest favouritist blog, The Art of Doing Stuff, I made pasta for the first time today. And, oh yay, it was spectacularly great tasting despite the ineptness of the pasta maker. Beginning with, How to make pasta … Continue reading