adventures in cooking
When Geoff and I were in Sicily and then in Italy, we ate a ton of pasta. Because, duh! And every now and then Geoff would start fantasizing aloud about getting a pasta machine and making our own fresh pasta.
I mostly demurred, partly because it sounded like a whole lot of work for a noticeable but not overwhelming improvement in yum -- but also because, the more Geoff built pasta castles in the air, the more I was Hatching a Plan.
I'm not about to buy a pasta machine without some evidence that we'd actually use it. But people did make pasta before the rise of the machines! So when we were back and I was out running some errands, I bought a ravioli cutter (this one, basically, though from a local shop, not Amazon) and found some recipes for whole-wheat ravioli. My plan was to wait for Geoff to go away for a day or two, which he rarely does without me, but it does happen; and to surprise him with homemade pasta for dinner when he came home!
Well, the next trip of his own he had planned, to go visit friends in Toronto, was abruptly canceled when our cat got so ill and had to be put down. And I had no idea when he might take another one. So I gave up on the idea of a complete surprise, and last week I just told him that an upcoming dinner would be a surprise. (And I listed it on the dinner list as "cat food and tears.") As I expected would happen, he came through the kitchen in the late afternoon as I was working on it and discovered what I was planning -- but it was still a surprise, just not at actual dinnertime.
I followed recipes to make a basic pasta dough with whole-wheat flour and eggs, and let it rest while I made a spinach and ricotta filling. Then I rolled it out by hand as thinly as I could. It was really stiff! I kept folding it over and rolling in different directions, just as the instructions for doing it with a machine instructed, but man, it was hard work. Then I plopped spoonfuls of filling on the fairly thin sheet of dough, laid another on top, and cut out ravioli by hand. It took a long time, and I totally failed at estimating how much filling would fill the number of ravioli my dough ball would make; I ended up with tons extra. (So I just mixed it into the tomato sauce.)
They were tasty, though, and although it was a lot of work it was definitely fun!
And of course if I had a pasta machine to roll it out, and a ravioli mold instead of having to cut each one by hand, it would be a lot less work. So now I am considering getting a machine; Geoff has suggested that it could be our (belated) holiday gift to each other.
So if anyone has advice about pasta machines -- good features to look for, bad ones to watch out for, that sort of thing -- I'd love to hear it!
read
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I mostly demurred, partly because it sounded like a whole lot of work for a noticeable but not overwhelming improvement in yum -- but also because, the more Geoff built pasta castles in the air, the more I was Hatching a Plan.
I'm not about to buy a pasta machine without some evidence that we'd actually use it. But people did make pasta before the rise of the machines! So when we were back and I was out running some errands, I bought a ravioli cutter (this one, basically, though from a local shop, not Amazon) and found some recipes for whole-wheat ravioli. My plan was to wait for Geoff to go away for a day or two, which he rarely does without me, but it does happen; and to surprise him with homemade pasta for dinner when he came home!
Well, the next trip of his own he had planned, to go visit friends in Toronto, was abruptly canceled when our cat got so ill and had to be put down. And I had no idea when he might take another one. So I gave up on the idea of a complete surprise, and last week I just told him that an upcoming dinner would be a surprise. (And I listed it on the dinner list as "cat food and tears.") As I expected would happen, he came through the kitchen in the late afternoon as I was working on it and discovered what I was planning -- but it was still a surprise, just not at actual dinnertime.
I followed recipes to make a basic pasta dough with whole-wheat flour and eggs, and let it rest while I made a spinach and ricotta filling. Then I rolled it out by hand as thinly as I could. It was really stiff! I kept folding it over and rolling in different directions, just as the instructions for doing it with a machine instructed, but man, it was hard work. Then I plopped spoonfuls of filling on the fairly thin sheet of dough, laid another on top, and cut out ravioli by hand. It took a long time, and I totally failed at estimating how much filling would fill the number of ravioli my dough ball would make; I ended up with tons extra. (So I just mixed it into the tomato sauce.)
They were tasty, though, and although it was a lot of work it was definitely fun!
And of course if I had a pasta machine to roll it out, and a ravioli mold instead of having to cut each one by hand, it would be a lot less work. So now I am considering getting a machine; Geoff has suggested that it could be our (belated) holiday gift to each other.
So if anyone has advice about pasta machines -- good features to look for, bad ones to watch out for, that sort of thing -- I'd love to hear it!
read
comments | post a comment at Dreamwidth
How to use OpenID (optional unless you are commenting on a locked post)