Holiday Chocolate Gift Ideas

Homemade Pasta – Playing With Your Food

Simple ingredients of flour, eggs, olive oil and water become pasta; the soul satisfying comfort food of generations of families. Even if you did not grow up in an Italian home, noodles are a staple of many cultures around the world. Making your own pasta at home is easy and rewarding. If you’ve never tasted freshly made pasta, you are in for a real treat. You will have as much, if not more fun making it as eating it and it is an activity that can bring the whole family together. So, roll up your sleeves and plan on having fun.

One simple tool can really make pasta making fun, and that is a pasta machine. There are electric models as well as the more familiar hand crank types, but either version will make delicious pasta and make the process easier. The big advantage a pasta maker has over the hand roll method is that you get a consistent thinness throughout the dough and the dough becomes very stretchy, which is a quality you are looking for. If you are not familiar with pasta makers, some of the name brands to look for are Lello, Imperia and Weston, for electric models, and Atlas, CucinaPro and Imperia for the manual types. If you already have a Kitchenaid mixer, you can buy the Kitchenaid pasta attachment and mix and roll the dough with the same machine. My hand crank Atlas pasta machine has been the favored tool in our kitchen for rolling thin sheets of dough and everybody gets a turn at the crank.

If you are going to mix the dough by hand, start by placing the flour in a large bowl and make a well in the center. Crack the eggs into a smaller bowl and beat them lightly to break the yolks. Add the oil and water and mix well before pouring the liquids into the well in the center of the flour. Continue to mix with a fork or a wooden spoon until the dry ingredients are moistened and begin to clump together. Now roll up your sleeves and get ready to get your hands on the dough to finish the mixing.

Dust your hands with flour and begin to gather the clumps and begin kneading the dough right in the bowl. Grab the mass over onto itself, pushing and turning and folding the dough until it no longer sticks to the side of the bowl. Once you have one cohesive clump of dough, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, a large wooden cutting board works great, and continue to knead for 2 to 3 minutes.

The purpose of kneading the dough is to make sure that all the ingredients are fully incorporated together and to get the gluten in the flour to begin its work. If your dough is not coming together, sprinkle it with a little water and continue kneading. If the dough is sticking to your hands or the board, add a little flour by dusting the surface of the dough and the board. The dough is ready to rest when it becomes smooth, soft and pliable. Let it sit on the board at room temperature covered with a clean kitchen towel for about 30 minutes before rolling the dough.

Divide your dough into quarters and work with one piece of dough at a time. The general idea is to start rolling the dough through the thickest setting on your pasta machine, gradually decreasing the setting to roll a thin sheet of pasta. If you are making raviolis you will place the filling on one sheet of pasta, cover it with a second sheet and then use a pastry wheel to cut between the ravioli squares. All pasta maker machines come with some attachments for cutting the pasta into other shapes like tagliatelle and tagliolini. Some of the electric ones will also provide an extruding attachment for making rounded shapes like spaghetti and capellini. You can even cut the sheets by hand into strips that are 1 1/2 inches wide, like papardelle.

Once shaped the pasta is lightly dusted with flour again, to prevent sticking to itself, and allowed to rest. You can cook the pasta immediately and toss it with your favorite sauce, or you can let it dry. A pasta drying rack keeps the noodles separated as they dry so the noodles won’t end up as a big clump of dough when you try to cook them. You can also freeze the pasta for future use.

Homemade pasta has a rich, delicate flavor and a softer texture than commercially processed pasta. It is made with fresh ingredients and they say that the good energy that goes into the making of the food you eat is healthier for you. Once you have eaten a dish or two of your own pasta and had the pleasure of making it with family or friends, you will realize that you want to make fresh pasta a regular event in your kitchen. Now that’s comfort food. Start your own family tradition of making pasta together and create some special family memories.

Making fresh homemade pasta has been a Lauder family specialty for years. Family, friends and neighbors all play a role in making the dough and sitting at the table to feast on the results. Watch a video on rolling dough through a pasta machine on Geri’s website, browse great cookbooks and pick out a pasta machine for your next family pasta party.