Please read the concept behind Notes From The Kitchen HERE
Home made pasta rules, like really rules so much so that it is totally worth the effort. When you make it yourself and it is fresh with really beautiful eggs and fresh flour you will understand why Italians use sauce to accent pasta not the other way around, like we do. The only problem is that very rarely will you find a cook book that goes in depth enough to really explain how to do it right. Herbert Keller does just that in French Laundry. You can find a thousand pasta dough recipes and they are all basically the same... Flour, egg, olive oil and that is about it. The hard part is the process. Even in restaurants today you will very rarely find home made fresh pasta. Sad really... On to the process
Take two cups of flour and pour in into a mound on a large working surface. Make a well in the middle of the flour so that the walls are about two inches high and the middle is hollow. Put 5 egg yokes, one egg and a teaspoon of olive oil in the well. Now take your index and middle finger and gently break the yokes while swirling the liquid mixture clockwise. Now this is the cool part... As you work the eggs clockwise you will see the flour pull away from the walls of the well you made and incorporate into the liquid. This is the key to pasta, slow incorporation in the liquid or it will get lumpy. Continue doing this gradually pulling more and more flour into the mixture till it has formed a dough. The dough will be very sticky for longer than you think. Keep going till it has lost some stickiness and the dough pulls apart in strings. Roll the dough into a ball.
Now you need to start the kneading process. This is the second trick. DO NOT FOLD
AND KNEED like a bread this will ruin it. Kneed it with the palm of your hand pressing
down onto the work surface. When the dough is flat re-
Once done form into a ball again and double wrap in plastic wrap and let sit out
for an hour. The Dough should increase in size some but not much. Now work the dough
out on a very lightly floured surface till it is thin and cut into workable strips.
Next roll it out to desired thickness (usually very thin) with a pasta roller. Then
cut into the pasta you want. If you want ravioli stuff it with some cheese, if you
want paparidelli tear or cut into thick ribbons. Add the pasta to well salted boiling
water for 4-
S
dd
excellent winter meal.
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