I took a pasta making class at King Arthur Flour today. As with the bread making class I took, I was amazed at how easy it is to make fresh pasta. Just three ingredients: durum wheat, all-purpose flour, and eggs.
and you’ve got your dough. Then the magic begins with the pasta roller.
You get these very thin sheets and after a few minutes to dry out a bit, the fun begins with cutting into whatever shapes your pasta machine or little hands can make.
We made ravioli that we stuffed with a ricotta and zucchini mixture and then cooked, topped with a brown butter and zucchini and zucchini blossom sauce.
We made fettuccine which was tossed with a butter and marjoram sauce (we planted marjoram this year and now I know what to do with it!)
We also made little rolls of pasta using a gnocchi paddle. Whatever scraps were left will get tossed into broth for a soup.
Then we ate!
Manga! Now that I’m baking all of our bread and rolls (including delish hamburger buns), adding on another hour to the cooking on Sundays doesn’t really seem to add that much, seeing as how it tastes AMAZING and you can make double/triple batches and freeze. My plan is to take a Sunday morning and make tons and freeze and when running low, make another big batch. The only thing left to get is a generator to run the fridge/freezer for when we loose power, which seems to be a lot. Now that we are starting to slowly grow some of our food, it would be worth investing in keeping it chill.
3 responses to “Pasta presto!”
that pasta sounds like a lot of fun. instead of the generator, how about a chest freezer? loaded with frozen dough, and other good thermal mass, it will stay cold for a really long time, especially if you don’t open it when the power goes out. also, when you open the lid, the coolth stays down low, good for long term… just a thought. love -s
Hey Stephen! We’ve talked a little bit about a freezer and space seems to be the main argument against it. It would have to go in the detached garage, which is a disaster right now. Although I haven’t done a size comparison between a suitable generator and freezer. They could be equally voluminous. How long do you think a packed freezer would stay acceptably cool? It’s not uncommon to loose power for 24 hours or more when we do loose it.
Good to hear from you too! How’s things on the west coast? I think it’s worth looking into option of chest freezer. I had thought about a small chest freezer because it would be nice to make a bunch of meals and freeze them. The issue to date has been we haven’t had enough room in freezer for me to do this in any large quantity, but having one would save time and probably money over the long run. Ben, get on the cost-comparison!