I Make-a da Pasta!

On New Years Eve, John and I were having Matt and Kim over for a small New Years party.  Since Johnny had gotten me a pasta machine for Christmas, I decided I would make homemade pasta for dinner that night.

After cleaning and preparing the pasta machine (you have to run some throw-away dough through it first to clean the rollers), I got ready to make the pasta dough. Johnny had gotten me a bag of semolina flour along with the machine (and a great book too!), but when I opened it it had bugs in it — ew!  Yay random vendors in St. Lawrence Market.

After a quick trip to Consiglio’s for some new flour, I was able to make the dough.  I let it sit for a bit, then cut it into small chunks and started putting it through the rollers.  The machine has varying thicknesses, from 7 (thickest) to 1 (thinnest).  Johnny and I took the pasta sheets down to a four for this first try, but I think next time I’ll go thinner.

Once I had all the dough into sheets, I started cutting it into fettucini.  I know the machine has a special roller for making wide noodles, but I wanted to make this the way my nonna does (she cuts the noodles thinner than the rollers do, and they end up all slightly different sizes as a result). It took me a little while to get the hang of cutting the noodles thin enough. The ones below were my first attempt and ended up much wider than I wanted.

While all of this was going on, Johnny was busy making some tomato sauce.  Once Matt and Kim had arrived, I also made some ground turkey meatballs.  The end result was an all-homemade dinner that was really really yummy! I can’t wait to make more pasta!