Make Your Own Pasta

At last count I have 110 cookbooks, though another two arrived today in the mail. I can’t stop myself - I love cookbooks. Really good ones are like great novels that nourish the soul and body. In addition, they keep on giving. So many times I pull out a cookbook to review a recipe and end up coming across something new that passed me by the first, second, third time around. By the time I’m finished an hour of time has been absorbed and I’ve added more food items onto the shopping list.

I bought my first cookbook when I was eighteen. It was like a right of passage for me. I needed to sustain myself and this was going to teach me how. It was Marion Cunningham’s revised edition of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook. When I was younger and still living at home, I used to pull out my mother’s beat up, food stained, no cover jacket version of Fannie Farmer out of which I learned to make my first coffee cake and corn bread. I loved it. I would read the beginning sections of every chapter for its overview and to review the little hand drawn sketches of various techniques. I was hooked.

When the weather is cold and outdoor activities become limited, cookbooks can transplant you to countries where the sun is always shining, the people are welcoming and the food is to die for. They are like travelogues without all the bad parts. Lately, I’ve been spending a great deal of time in Italy – the beautiful northern regions of Trentino-Alto Adige, Lombardy, and Valle D’Aosta that border Switzerland, Austria and France and that are famous for their mountains, lakes (Lake Como) and food like Asiago, Grana Padano and Fontina cheeses, and the short grain rices like Arborio and Carnaroli. Emilia-Romagna, which sits just a little bit south of these regions, is famous for its egg pasta and its classic Bolognese sauce (named after its capital Bologna).

It was at this point that I got inspired to make fresh egg pasta this weekend. Fresh pasta may sound daunting to make but the dough is a breeze if you have a food processor and a pasta machine to roll it out (like the one pictured above). If you’re a wiz at rolling and stretching, you don’t need a pasta machine. For that fact, you don’t need a food processor either as you can make the pasta dough using the traditional well method which starts with a mound of flour and then incorporates the eggs by making a well in the flour. But I think the food processor method produces great results for everyone.

I’ve noticed that over time the recipe for pasta dough has changed. In my older cookbooks, such as “Classic Italian Cooking” by Marcella Hazan’, the ratio of eggs to dough was typically one cup of flour to one egg. More current cookbooks utilize a ratio of one cup of flour to two eggs. The extra eggs create a dough that is not only easier to work with but is smooth and silky feeling. The recipe is pretty straightforward and I particularly like this one by Lidia Bastianich. Place 3 cups of flour into your food processor and pulse once or twice to aerate. In a measuring cup with sprout, whisk 3 eggs, 3 egg yolks, 3 tablespoons olive oil and 3 tablespoons cold water. With the machine running add the egg mixture to the flour and process until the dough starts to come together into a ball. If necessary add a bit more water if the dough does not gather into a ball. Remove from machine and knead for a minute or so. Your dough should feel smooth and soft. Wrap in plastic wrap and let rest on counter for 30 minutes. That’s it! The resting period is longer than the time it takes to make the dough.

Stretching the dough in the pasta machine requires some patience. You’ll need both hands to crank the machine and hold the pasta sheet as it continues to get stretched and some extra flour in a cup. Start by cutting the dough into 6 pieces; set aside 5 pieces in the plastic wrap to keep from drying out. Flatten the remaining dough into a rough circle, pat a little bit of flour onto it and pass through the pasta machine at its widest setting (usually marked 1) Decrease the setting a notch and pass the dough again through the machine. You will continue this process until the lowest or second to lowest setting on the machine (6 or 7). The pasta should be thin enough so that you can see your hand behind it when held up to the light and its around 30 inches long and five inches wide. At this point you can cut the sheet into two rectangle half’s so that is more manageable ending up with two sheets about 12 inches long. Repeat with the remaining pieces of dough. When I’m finished stretching all six pieces, I use a sharp chef’s knife to cut each pasta sheet into strips ½ inch wide to make pappardelle or tagliatelle noodles. Cook in boiling salted water until al dente and top with your favorite sauce. This pasta is so good butter and cheese would be enough.