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Homemade Pasta

Before we discuss pasta making, I need to remind you that I do not like red sauce.  I love tomatoes, I love everything that goes into the sauce but I do not like the sauce.  Explain that!  OK .. I didn’t think you’d have an explanation.  I eat pizza but mostly just what I make at home and I put very little sauce on the end I’m going to be eating.   I do not like lasagna at all.  Vince is Sicilian.  He could eat pasta with red sauce and meatballs three meals a day every day.   I fix it for him and he likes my sauce but I’ll usually eat the pasta with some butter and one meatball.  It seems that since I like all the ingredients that go into marinara sauce, I should be able to learn to like red sauce but so far, no luck with that.

When we were visiting with the folks at the San Saba Olive Oil Company, they asked me if I made our own pasta.  No!  I do not.  There are two reasons I do not make it.  First, several years ago, during a weak moment, or maybe I had ordered too much yarn and was feeling a bit guilty, I decided that every good wife who has a good Sicilian husband should make fresh pasta to be served with their Italian meals so I ordered a pasta maker. 

The second reason I did not make our own pasta is that when the pasta maker arrived, I was so anxious to make homemade pasta. I did and it was a disaster.  The first attempt was a crumbly mess.  I threw it in the trash and made another batch and it was a sticky mess and I threw it in the trash, packed the pasta maker away and never touched it again.

When we do eat Italian food out, the first thing that catches my attention is the homemade, fresh, tender pasta.  It’s so different from the dried pasta I buy in the grocery store.

Over the weekend I began thinking I’d give homemade pasta another try but I really thought I had thrown out the pasta maker since my attempt at using it had been such a disaster.  I remembered opening a box in the upstairs storage room that contained items that were stored near where I had last seen the pasta maker in the garage in Missouri, so I went out and found that box, dug through it and there it was .. the pasta maker I thought I’d tossed.  Sometimes it pays to be a pack rat!

Last night, we were not having pasta for dinner but I wanted to give it a try so I mixed up a small batch and it worked perfectly!  No crumbles, no sticky mess.  What did I do differently from the first time I used it?  I have no idea!

I had no pasta drying rack, though I’ve ordered one this morning, so I set up my wire rack over two half gallon jars and used that.  It worked just fine.  The pasta was so simple to make — flour (all purpose because I couldn’t find semolina though I’ve ordered that this morning also), eggs, a bit of olive oil and salt.  It was quite simple to clean up since they recommend that you brush the crumbs or residue from the pasta maker and don’t use water.

I think I’m hooked!  I remembered that this thing was in my laundry room.

I don’t think I’ve ever used it.  I think I made ravioli without using it once — laying out a sheet of pasta, putting some little mounds of filling, then putting another sheet of pasta dough over it, crimping with a fork and then cutting them apart.  That was quite frustrating so I ordered this handy little gizmo and by the time it arrived, I had decided the pasta maker was more trouble than it was worth.

Stay tuned . . tonight we’re having chicken ravioli with red sauce for dinner and for dessert . . yum . . you’ll have to check back tonight to see what I fixed but I’m thinking I’m going to have a real hard time waiting for dessert.  I will tell you this . . Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream is involved!  🙂

Go ahead .. order yourself a pasta maker and a little ravioli maker.  We’re fixing to have a lot of fun on here with these two gadgets.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I make my noodles all the time.. I have the pasta maker like yours. But a few years ago DH bought me the one that attaches to my Mixer… love it…. make the process so fast..

    • Love my KitchenAid attachment too! I made 250 dozen Pierogi’s in two days with the attachment and wondered how i ever did without it! Of course, When I got my hand crank machine I though the same thing about it too!

  2. I’m not a pasta fan – I eat it but seldom but I see great use for that ravoli maker — make pie crust, put some sort of filling in, and pop out little desserts to bake. Tiny little pies to go with your Blue Bell. 😉

  3. I have never made my own pasta, either. Years ago, my mom used to make homemade noodles…. yummy! But I’ve resisted buyiing this particular item to find a place to store! *L* I do love fresh pastas at restaurants though. Maybe I should buy one for our daughter and let her store it and just borrow it once in a while! I do find it amazing that you don’t like marinara sauce. I have a couple of other friends who don’t like it either, but as you, like all of the ingredients. When our daughter was still at home, and it seemed like we were feeding a houseful of teens all of the time, marinara sauce with something under it was a savior!

  4. I used to make our own fresh pasta and it was fantastic. My machine died. I may have to look into the mixer attachment. I have some great recipes for ravioli. I love red sauce…never met one I didn’t like. I always make homemade noodles cooked in turkey broth (which becomes gravy) for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yum.

  5. I had one of those pasta makers! I used it a couple of times and it was fun, but just not practical for my time or my crowd and it went by the way of a garage sale. I’d get another one now, given the chance. 🙂

  6. Judy, you are AMAZING!!

    I don’t particularly like red sauce, either. A little goes a looong way with me. On the homemade pasta note, my brother’s wife and I took cooking classes years ago and learned to make ravioli. We also learned to bone and stuff a chicken. Both were met with great raves by our extended family. Then brother and wife moved far away. Neither of use tried either thing again. Sure was fun to do together, though.

  8. I’m half Italian…… I grew up on and love red sauces. Had 6 aunts and my mom and all their sauces tasted different, you knew who made it by the flavor.

    Also grew up on homemade pasta…………..

    gah…….now I’m hungry!!!!!

    • Oh and DH loves tomato based sauce, lasagna, ravioli, baked manicotti, all of it, but won’t eat a cooked tomato in any other form at all…………..

      LOL go figure!

  9. I have a pasta maker – still in the box – and it’s probably been over 30 years. I keep saying I’ll do a lot of things differently when I get my ‘new kitchen’….we’ll see.

  10. I love love love red sauce and fresh pasta. I’ve thought for years about buying a pasta maker, but I don’t spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Sewing/quilting and my full-time job seem to take up 90% of my time.

  11. I have a pasta maker and have made lots of noodles with it. I have also made pasta without the pasta maker, but it is harder to do. I could eat pasta daily with or without a sauce. I love a my homemade red sauce, but butter or a creamy sauce is fine also. I am sure a good olive oil with vegetables would be great.

    I also have a ravioli maker, but have rarely used it. I think that is because we never had ravioli or any stuffed pasta as a child. Looking forward to future posts regarding you new adventure with pasta.

  14. my hubby isn’t a huge pasta fan, so i don’t make homemade pasta. i’ve made homemade noodles before and they turned out pretty good, but they are work! and dumplings – yum! grandma had dumplings down to a science and i have her bread dumpling recipe. don’t make them too often either, though.

  15. I don’t care what the subject of your post is, it is always entertaining. I think you should write a book, in your spare time. (LOL) You have a very fun writing style! Enjoy your dinner, and be sure to take pictures before it’s all gone.
    Hugs

  16. I love pasta!!!!
    Positively will not make it myself…. someone has to support the companies that make it and sell it… Might as well be me. !

  17. The funny thing is, my husband always raves about the homemade noodles his dear departed mother would make. Poor man, has to settle for inferior noodles now! ( But he always eats what I serve).

  18. My 18 year old daughter has become the expert pasta maker in our family. When she makes any ahead of time, we lay it on a cookie sheet, with enough flour sprinkled to keep it from sticking, and put it int he freezer. It just adds a minute or 2 to the cooking time. To take it to my sister’s house for Christmas, she made little nests of pasta to freeze, then put them in a ziploc baggie to transport in a cooler.

  19. I have made homemade noodles for my chicken soup but has never tried to make pasta! How long can they be stored for or do they have to be used right away? I never tried to save the homemade noodles for my soup but I do like the idea of making my own pasta fresh.

  20. I make the pasta dough in the breadmaker, then run it through the pasta machine (exact same brand as yours! are they all the same?) – and also for thin pastries/doughs for calzones or curry puffs.

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