For my first attempt at homemade pasta, I decided to pick a simple recipe and style. The video showing Chef Joe Venezia seemed to have all the qualities I was looking for and I liked the way he instructed on the video as opposed to showing off.
I found il Boccaccio's basic ratios to work quite well and I only made a 1lb & 3 eggs amount for my trial run. Let me tell ya, that produced much more pasta than expected (see photo)!
I didn't cut my pasta with a knife. I used the attachments on my machine to cut the linguine and spaghetti and I was happy with the results. I have also watched a few other videos in the past that discuss hanging the pasta to dry out if its not being used. I don't own a pasta rack (even though they are very inexpensive and readily available), so I used my clothes drying rack instead and it worked fine, but I do believe the detachable arms on a pasta rack would made the dry presentation better.
After letting the pasta dry for an hour (and making some homemade marinara) I added the fresh noodles to boiling salted water and cooked until they were to my liking.
The flavor was delicious and the pasta wrapped around my fork as it should. In the end I was quite please with my experience and this recipe!
Try it and enjoy!
A couple notes:
-my pasta machine wouldn't clamp to my counter and kept wiggling loose...any advice?
-clean off your counters and have as much room as possible while rolling out the dough! It makes approx 2 whole boxes of linguine noodles.
-I put the unused spaghetti in the freezer...thoughts?
Im not sure how to fix the clamping for the machine but I usually freeze whatever excess I make rather than dry it. I try to lay it out in a single layer on a pan until its hard enough not to stick together and bag it up. Works great for noodles and smaller pastas. Probably a little harder for long pastas. Hope this helps :)
ReplyDeleteI think you took the right decision when you used the clothes rack for the pasta, since it is perfect for cooking spaghetti. I learnt a lot of tricks like this one when I was in my buenos aires apartment. On that trip I realized that Argentineans love pasta because it tastes wonderfully!
ReplyDeleteBrooke