Home made pasta!

For New Year's Cam and I decided to make home made pasta! A feat Cam had been talking about forever! So we rented some movies, stayed in and dusted off the 'ol pasta attachment for our Kitchen aid. It is truly amazing what can be made with flour and an egg. And the result was probably thee best pasta I have had in a VERY long time, Of course it's easy for one to be biased when you make it yourself. We used a Mario Batali recipe and in his book he mentions when in Italy not only did they use their kitchen chairs to dry the pasta but even their beds! ( You'll be happy to know we used our chairs)

Here's a picture of Millie waiting for the scraps to inevitably fall from the cutting process. Unfortunately Millie had too much pasta which resulted in us taking turns through out the night to let her out.... mental note for the future! Whoops, poor little dog!

Here is the video of the cutting process. Excuse my bad stereotyping, maybe watch it with the volume off! And the second video is what comes before- the pressing. Each section is pressed 6 times at different pressures.

I made a cream sauce which I perfected while living in Italy- simply a coincidence. You start with olive oil in a pan fry up some garlic and maybe some onion if you like. Then add 1/2 cup of white flour to the oil, stir it around and when it becomes pasty, add 1/2 cup of milk. You can add cheese if you like, but this time I added one can of diced tomatoes and some sun-dried tomatoes we had lying around. You will need to keep the milk near by in case the sauce really starts to thicken, then just keep adding milk until you get the right proportion. And with all cooking and with typically Italian cooking- it's all about the feel of something and is ultimately up to you the cook!

I hope this has inspired you to make pasta if you haven't before. This is just the beginning of our pasta making endeavors, although I doubt we will do this every month!