fresh homemade pasta

I have been intending to make homemade fresh pasta for some time now. Unfortunately, I do not have a pasta machine, which is the main reason I have been putting it off. Today, though, I was thumbing through The Silver Spoon: Pasta, an Italian cookbook given to us as a wedding gift, and decided tonight was the night. The original recipe I was going to use from the book called for two kinds of flour that I don't have, so I abandoned that track and went in search of a simple "how to" online. What I found was a tutorial on a blog that will probably now be one of my absolute favourites, mostly because I adore Italian cooking.

The Italian Dish has a great post about making fresh pasta, along with a short video. The nice thing about making pasta is that it's not quite an exact recipe, which makes it perfect for me. Basically, it's a ratio of flour and eggs, plus a little water if needed. And there is the possibility of adding other flavours, like tomato or spinach. I decided to make the tomato-flavoured pasta because I had leftover tomato paste from the other day.

See, flour and eggs. And a food processor because that was less messy than mixing by hand.

I'm rather proud of my dough.

Look at the ickle noodles!

 

 

 

 

YUM.

As you can probably see from the photos, the noodles aren't uniform and are rather thick. As a result, they had the texture of over-cooked pasta, but they still tasted excellent with the sauteed veggies (green and red bell pepper and shallots) and homemade meatballs. This meal went really well with a glass of red wine.