First off: today is the last day for participating in the give away!
I doubt that anyone will disagree with this statement: pasta is the ultimate comfort food. It has traveled over the borders of Italy far and wide to infect the whole world with its wonderfulness. Also, pasta is as versatile as it gets, it basically goes with anything and everything! And there are just so many shapes and forms, colours and flavours… it is the playground of cooking! Gnocchi, orecchiette, farfalle, fusilli… And there’s just as many varieties for what to combine the pasta with.
I doubt that anyone will disagree with this statement: pasta is the ultimate comfort food.
For me, pasta really is the ultimate comfort food as I have Italian ancestry. I can’t tell you how many childhood memories I have from my mum spending the day in the kitchen making homemade pasta from scratch that she learned from my grandmother, for hours on end until almost every clean surface on the house had a big tray with curls and curls of freshly made tagliatelle. It is also one of my fondest Christmas memories. Imagine 6 year old me sneaking to where my mum couldn’t see me to eat some of the raw pasta, only to have her find me and tell me off because I was going to get a tummy ache from eating raw egg. My mum not only made the pasta from fresh eggs and flour, she also kneaded the dough by hand, and would then spend hours rolling it out by hand with a rolling pin and slicing it up for the end result. It was a day’s worth of hard labour. I’m privileged to have a KitchenAid
and the pasta roller attachment that do most of the work for me! My next step will be to get one of these
to avoid having to cut each sheet of pasta by hand and reduce the preparation time.
I am here to bring you a very easy recipe for beginners, in the hopes that I will convince you to try on your own. I promise you it is one of the most rewarding recipes you can make, and once you’ve tried and realised how simple it actually is, your mind will be changed. I actually made some just a few days ago, after I left the office, in as little as 30 minutes. I do however strongly recommend that if you get a liking for making fresh homemade pasta you buy one of these pasta cutter gadgets to speed the process up. Also you can make this pasta ahead of time and freeze separate for single servings, so that you can calculate how much you’ll need before you defrost. But more on that later on. Now let’s face the intimidating fresh homemade pasta and shake if off!
This should be enough for 2 hungry people:
- 2 fresh eggs
- 200g flour tipo 00, plus extra for dusting
- a pinch of salt
- In a bowl, put the flour together with the eggs and salt and mix well. If you have a KitchenAid or similar, you can mix it with the kneading hook attachment. It should eventually become an elastic and soft dough. If it feels too dry, you can add one tablespoon of water and mix again until desired consistency. The ideal will be when the dough is slightly sticky but leaves no residue on your fingers.
- Dust some flour on a clean and dry surface, and divide your pasta dough into 4 parts. Roll each part with a rolling pin until very thin (it should be slightly seethrough). If you have a pasta roller
, have the gadget do the hard work for you. - Start cutting into thin slices that will become the tagliatelle. Take your rolled out sheets of pasta and fold them without applying pressure, and making sure there’s enough flour in between each fold so they don’t stick. Then, using a very sharp knife, slice lengthwise and unfold carefully. If you have a pasta cutter, allow it to take the workload off your shoulders.
- Heat salted water in a big pot until it boils. Pour the pasta in and cook for about 3 minutes (fresh pasta takes very little time to cook, if you overcook it it’ll become hard and chewy). Drain and serve with the sauce of your choice.
