Our Italian friends came to visit today.
We live in the country and they are from the city and we talked about missing fresh pasta here in the country.
"How many eggs do they lay ?" he asked as he watched our free range hens scratching in the garden. Suddenly he sat up straight.
" You gotta pasta machine ?"
I disappeared into the pantry and emerged dusting off a long forgotten box with an Italian made Imperia pasta maker.
"It's an excellent machine" he stared at me in amazement.
"Its almost new, you've barely used it" he said in disbelief, "pasta making is so easy !" and
"You have a goldmine here" . Barely able to contain his excitement, he talked non-stop of how to make home made fresh pasta and how simple it was to make and how we could have a never ending supply of freshly made, economical pasta. I was almost sorry I'd hauled out the box !
But what is the recipe I asked. "Recipe, recipe ? You don't need a recipe" he scoffed, " just make one small pile of flour with a "dent" in the middle and put in two eggs and then, slowly, slowly, bring the flour into the egg" and leaning back thinking he added "you might need some water"
When I pressed him for the amount, he said it depended...... then seeing the look on my face added "about two fingers worth !!! Bearing in mind that my friend has been a chef, restauranteur and previously a baker, I think maybe he made pasta on autopilot !
"Anyone can make it - you have eggs, you have flour and you have the machine. You have a goldmine" he said again, looking puzzled as to why we hadn't thought of it before and shrugged.
We all sat down to eat lunch and discuss food (of course, what else) followed by him making a beeline for the armchair "to take a short rest" and promptly went to sleep ! His job was done it seems.
- The Recipe:
- One and a half cups of flour (sifted finely)
- Make a well in the middle and add two large eggs (free range if possible)
- My friend uses his hands but I used a fork to gradually add the flour
- to the eggs and (if required only) add a small amount of water as my friend says
- maybe "the depth of 2 fingers in a glass!" I only needed to use a very small amount.
- Knead the dough until it is smooth and cover and let it rest for at least half an hour, but an hour is better.
- Clear a table or bench so you have lots of room and firmly attach your pasta cutter. Make sure you have a lot of clear space as I discovered when I covered everything in sight with flour and pasta including the cat. Put the dough through your pasta machine on the most open setting.
- Each time you put it through, lightly dust with flour and fold it over before you put it through again, several more times wouldn't hurt as it is like kneading the dough each time you put it through. If it becomes too wide, fold in half lengthwise so you get a nice long oblong.
- Keep adjusting the clicks to the finer setting and keep adding a fine dust of flour each time.
- You should end up with a fine, silky length of dough to feed through your chosen cutter.
- The pasta pictured came out fettucine size but my machine also cuts spaghetti and noodle size and there are attachments for other settings. You can either cook it straight away or hand it to dry on a rack or clothes airer.
- If you don't have a pasta maker you will need to use a rolling pin ( my friend says "rolling stick") and keep rolling out until you have a fine silky dough and simply roll up and cut by hand.
I'm definitely going to ask them for some more ideas !
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