Pasta for Everyone

Little K and I had the great idea to make pasta - from scratch! I'm not quite sure why, since you can buy a box of pasta in any flavor, or shape you want for just around a dollar. I guess it was the thought of playing around in the messy dough that appealed to both of us. Besides, isn't anything home made Better than store bought?

So with that thought in mind - we got started.

The ingredients are simple. Just Eggs, Flour, Olive Oil and Salt. I'm sure a real Italian cook would just mix it all together until it felt right. But we needed to at least start with a recipe.

Homemade Pasta

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
5 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

Mound flour in the center of a large board. Make a well in the flour and break the eggs into the center. Sprinkle on the salt and add the oil. With your fingertips, mix the eggs into the flour gradually incorporating the walls of the well. When all the eggs are mixed with the flour, knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic. It will be very firm and should be quite smooth, the kneading process will take about 10 minutes.

Roll the dough into long strips. Dry the strips slightly (we use a long handled wooden spoon). After the dough is slightly dry, (don't wait too long or the dough will be too brittle to cut), cut the strips into desired shapes (long thin strips). Dry on a rack until ready to use.

Incorporating the flour into the eggs was a lot of fun. That's Little K doing all the work. Look at that beautiful golden color. I swear it's from the brown eggs I use.



Two huge jars of olives I keep on my kitchen counter worked perfect as a drying station for the pasta. We used a long wooden spoon across the top, and hung the cut pasta strips over the spoon.

As we were cutting the strips, I was really wishing I had bought that pasta machine I wanted for making Skulpy Clay creations. I'm not sure why, but the the shape, and thickness of the pasta effects the taste, and it's pretty difficult to get the pasta thin enough when you are rolling by hand (at least for us it was).

I won't say it was the best tasting pasta we have ever had. I think if we were able to make the strips narrower and thinner, they would have tasted better. But we had loads of fun making our noodles, and I'm sure we'll do it again soon.

While we were waiting for the pasta to dry, we whipped up some home made vanilla ice cream to eat with these delicious white nectarines. The Pasta may not have been perfect...but the ice cream was pretty close, and definitely better than last time....I think we finally have it figured out.

So come on over for dinner. We always have the ingredients on hand for Homemade Pasta and Vanilla Ice Cream.