Monday, October 12, 2009

Two Turntables and a Rolling Pin

I am woman. I rule kitchen. I make pasta......from scratch.
That's right, scratch! Wicki-wicki *spinning my air-turntables*

I had been thinking about making my own pasta, but I was way too intimidated by the idea. And then I couldn't find pappardelle noodles and I didn't want to substitute with fettucine noodles like the recipe suggested. I decided to finally go for it.

All I used was flour and water, per the recipe found here . I peeked at a recipe from my cookbook to compare, but it had several other ingredients and I decided to keep it simple. I kneaded the flour and water together, and then rolled it out as thin as I could with my rolling pin (which was a major arm workout - I was actually sore the next day!) After that I cut it into strips with my pizza cutter. The pappardelle noodles were perfect for my scratch pasta experiment, because they are about 1 inch wide, easy to cut with the pizza cutter. After I initially cut them, I rolled them out again and was able to get them much thinner than before. Here they are, ready to pop in the water!

And after boiling them (until they float, and then for 5 minutes (and one taste-test) afterwards)

And finally, in our lamb ragu

The noodles actually looked and tasted like real pasta. The whole process took me about 1 hour, from looking up the recipe to finishing the cleanup. I did this during the day while BB was napping and then just refrigerated them until dinnertime. The whole experiment was fun and empowering. And after peeking at the ingredients list on the pasta package in my pantry, I love knowing exactly what is in my noodles - flour and water. Next on the wicki-wicki list - tortillas and bread!

5 comments:

  1. Go Keeley, Go!! I'm impressed!! :) Glad you're having fun with your from-scratch recipes! I especially like the "wicki-wicki!" sound effects to go with it all! - Hannah

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  2. I've done tortillas! We should make a Mommy date out of it. You help me make pasta and I will help you make tortillas!

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  3. Great job Keeley! I tried making pasta once and I just couldn't get it thin enough so it didn't taste that great. There are some things that is worth the extra time for me to make it from scratch, but pasta is not one of them :) But home made tortillas, now those are worth it!!!

    Oh, and I read that blog too! She's been MIA the past two days, so I'm thinking her baby was born

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  4. that looks yummy! Want to send me the recipe? My mom ordered the Evangeline onesie off a website lunabtee.com

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  5. I want to try to make Gnocci (it's a potato based pasta...) from scratch, now you've inspired me! I've done torts - it's pretty easy :)

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