Fresh Pasta

This is a lesson in chaos. Try to enjoy it. It will be worth it, and even if after all your efforts you are left with nothing but a dusty kitchen, you can still avert tragedy with a box of dried spaghetti. 

This is too much fun to exclude your children from, and you will be surprised when the result it not only edible, but wonderful. I did this with my son when he was only two.  I put a sheet down on the floor of the family room and let him have at it. Against all odds my son provided us with dinner. I was amazed. 

My hope is that some day I will be able to give my children some flour and eggs, walk away, and come back to the miracle of fresh pasta, but I think we're still a few years away from that. 

There is a way to do this by hand, but I don't have the right rolling pin or even the space to do it that way, so I use a squeaky pasta machine that is at least forty years old. You can buy a used one on Amazon from $22. I think it's worth it. If you want to try it by hand, pick up a copy of The Classic Italian Cookbook by Marcella Hazan, another worthy investment. 

My seven year old, preparing for greatness in the kitchen.

Nowhere does the recipe call for a rolling pin if you're using a pasta maker, but my daughter decided it was necessary. She also incorporated so much flour that way that we had to throw out her dough. It was too slippery to even feed through the machine.

One egg will make enough pasta for 3-4 people, two eggs for 5-6 people. We used about five eggs since we planned on making extra to freeze. It didn't look like much, but it was very filling. 

Ingredients:
organic flour
eggs

1. Put 3/4 cup flour on a board and make a hole in the center. Break an egg into it. Use a fork to beat the egg, and begin to slowly incorporate some of the flour "walls" surrounding the egg. Keep mixing little by little. When it is too stiff to beat with the fork, knead it by hand. 

2. Now powder it with flour and begin feeding it through the widest setting on the pasta maker. Take it out, fold it in thirds, and put it through again. Repeat this a few times. If it feels a little moist when you are about to roll it through the machine, flour it just a little so it doesn't stick. Once the flour and egg look very well mixed, you can stop folding the dough and begin to narrow the settings on the roller. If you put it through and the dough was too sticky it will come out looking like melting swiss cheese. In this case, just fold it over and begin again. My kids and I never made it to the thinnest setting. Once you have a long, thin sheet of pasta, you can lay it out or hang it up somewhere to dry for about ten minutes. 

3. Now you can feed it through the wide noodle setting or the skinny noodle setting. Cook it in boiling salted water- it won't take long. As soon as it floats to the top it's done.   

Unfortunately, all this pasta was boiled to a mushy death by a helpful spouse. We ate it anyway and we'll do this again soon. Next time I make this I'll post pictures of the end result.