Cooking for those who are important to me gives me a lot of satisfction. You could say that it’s because Cooking is love… the time and energy spent making memorable meals is a way to show others you care… the care and feeding of family and friends is an expression of that love… Or maybe I just really love food. That’s entirely possible too.
I pin a ton of food over on my Pinterest account…. mostly stuff I plan to maybe possibly someday make… but my favorite is the board of recipes that I already have tried and love. Because there are a ton of recipes out there that just don’t quite measure up.
So… when I got the most amazing pasta set to attach to my Kitchenaid… you knew it was only a matter of time before I broke that bad boy out, right?
And let me tell you… Homemade pasta? Life. Changing.
So after some trial and error, I came up with a pasta that is delicious on it’s own or under the sauce of your choosing. And once you figure out how it all works, it’s so easy I’m not sure we will ever go back to boxed pasta… except on school nights. Making pasta is definitely a weekend activity.
And one where Mini-me likes to participate
As usual, I started with Pinterest for inspiration… and then modified considerably… If you don’t have the Kitchenaid set of pasta attachments, you can pick up a counter-mount model similar to the Meglio Pro Traditional-style Pasta Maker over at Amazon I suppose you could even roll & cut the dough out by hand if you REALLY wanted a challenge. I may try that when I try my hand at ravioli but that’s another post for another weekend. Another tip – learned the hard way – use a spice grinder or coffee bean grinder (clean and not previously used for coffee unless you are going for that flavor) or even a Magic Bullet type blender to mix your herbs and/or cheese prior to mixing into your flour. It turned the pasta a lovely shade of sage green in our case, but makes the rolling and cutting portion much easier. Lastly, if you are going to add toppings (aka – sauce) to your fabulous pasta, you might want to keep it simple so that the pasta shines through. We went with this shrimp and tomato sauce…
well, a version of it anyway – and it was perfect. The sky is the limit here. Seriously.
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There are some recipes out there that talk of “dressing” your cooked noodles in olive oil to prevent sticking but I’ve made these noodles twice now and never had an issue with them sticking together.
And yes, I know it LOOKS complicated, but give it a try! Seriously it was amazing and worth the little bit of effort it took!
It’s never too late to join in on the Axis of Ineptitude blogging challenge. Play along in as many or few as you want!
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