homemade pasta experiment

Since Ab had to go and get all confessional on us, I guess I too should confess to my addiction. Kitchen gadgets. I have to have them, need them, in fact, it’s like an illness. In my defense, very few of the gadgets I possess have actually been purchased by me, most of them were hand me downs, gifts, or purchased from the thrift store, so I think I am still on the safe side of the addiction.

A week or so ago, a coworker enabled my addiction by gifting me with a pasta roller. I have been coveting the pasta attachment for my mixer for a while now, so this was a welcome gift. Last weekend, inspired by Ab’s plan to actually put her multitudes of dresses to use, and prevent the roller from sitting in my pantry for months, gathering dust, I decided to bust it out and attempt my first homemade pasta.

apparently to be the real deal, you're supposed to do this on the counter and with your fingers, not with a fork.

gotta let those glutens rest!

Pete chose this shape, apparently it's his fave.

I turned to my homegirl Alice Waters for advice and a recipe and she really pulled through. In her book The Art of Simple Food (which was a gift from Pete and fast becoming one of my all time faves) she devotes three pages to pasta making, and that’s even before she gets to the recipe, so I felt pretty confident that I could pull it off. I had a few bumps along the road (it took me a while to figure out how to attach the roller to the counter without it coming loose, and the dough was really dry and wouldn’t come together as easily as I’d hoped) but I’d say my first foray into pasta making was a success.

pasta with sun dried tomatoes in a lemon parmesan cream sauce. delish but not the most photogenic.