Monday, January 30, 2012

Pasta Making

I went home earlier in the month for some family time.  My nieces were visiting and as activity, Grandmother decided that they should help her make fresh pasta for our evening meal.  Egg fettucini noodles are easy to make, actually, but first, Annabelle, Juliette, and Grandmother had to mathematically figure out how much of the ingredients were needed when quadrupling the recipe-- with 12 people to feed, a recipe has be at least 4 times more than what is called for!


How many eggs do we need? and cups of flour? 


After the math problem was solved, came the fun part: mixing the dough.  Annabelle was the expert egg cracker and Juliette the master of the food processing machine.  



Cracking and mixing

Juliette Child


The dough rested for a bit before the three chefs kneaded into smaller, flatter pieces.  This required both Annabelle and Juliette to stand on chairs in order to get enough leverage behind their kneading.


Time to knead the dough!















Once the dough was in smaller, flatter pieces, then fun really began!  The pasta machine was set up, ready for use.  













Annabelle fed the dough through the first section of the machine, cranking it slowly through, pressing the air out, and flattening the dough.  Starting at width 1 and working her way to a smaller width at level 5, Annabelle and Juliette turned the handle, moving the dough.  Once it was thin enough, they moved the handle to the second opening, where the dough was cut into noodles.

Turning the dough

Catching it on the other side





Annabelle cranked, and Juliette caught the noodles.  They then hung them up to dry.  Since we aren't in the noodle-making business, we don't have all the official equipment.  So, we improved with a clothes drying rack.  It is actually perfect for hanging out noodles.



drying on the rack


After a few hours on the rack, it was time to cook the noodles up and serve them with homemade pasta sauce.  The meal was absolutely delicious!  The best noodles I have had in a while.  The family nicknamed our budding chefs: Juliette Child and Annabelle Batali.  They can cook for us anytime!

1 comment:

Debb said...

So much fun! Next time I think we should make ravioli!