Homemade Pasta

With many of your favorite restaurants closed and all this extra time on your hands, why not make pasta!? It’s fun. It’s romantic. It’s delicious. And it’s easier than you think! Kids love to help make it (it’s just like play-dough, right!?). Significant others love to eat it. It’s a win-win in so many ways!

There are endless variations to this single recipe for egg pasta. One of my favorites is tagliatelle, which is derived from the Italian word “taglier” which means, “to cut” because you actually cut the pasta by hand. And it’s just as easy to make pappardelle (slightly wider noodles). If you have the attachments to your pasta maker (the old school hand crank like your nonna has, or the fancy and easy to use kitchenaid mixer attachments), you can make spaghetti and linguine. Stuffed pastas like ravioli and tortellini are fun if you have the filling and technique down, but we’ll save those ones for another day. Here I’ll just give you the recipe for a basic egg pasta.

The recipe I use is adapted from my culinary school cookbook (The International Culinary Center & ALMA) which uses half all purpose flour and half semolina flour. You can find semolina at pretty much any grocery store (sometimes in the organic aisle) or here on amazon. buy it in big bulk 50 bags from my friend who owns a restaurant since we make a lot of pasta in this house! Although not at all the same thing, it sort of resembles corn meal and makes my kitchen floor feel like a beach by the time I’m done with it (my cleaning lady Beth loves me after I make pasta)

Recipe:

300g all purpose flour (or 00 flour if you can get it!)

300g semolina flour

two good pinches of salt

6 eggs

20g good quality extra virgin olive oil

Directions: Combine all dry ingredients in a bowl or a kitchen aid mixer. Form a “well” in the middle and the add wet ingredients. Gradually add wet ingredients or use the hook attachment on the kitichenaid to bring the dough together. Knead into a ball. Bring to the countertop with plenty of flour so the dough doesn’t stick. Knead the dough for about 3-5 minutes more. Wrap in plastic and let it rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes or overnight before working with the pasta. Check out the photo below on how to roll out the dough!

My daughter Camilla and I made pasta on Easter Saturday for one of my favorite spring recipes, Pasta Primavera. This Figo signature dish is a homemade tagliatelle with fresh in-season spring vegetables. The pasta along with artichokes, peas, asparagus, shallots and mushrooms, is served in a white wine cream sauce. I wish I would have gotten a picture of our plates because I served it on my brand new blue china dinner plates. My mom, Ricky and I enjoyed dipping a rustic Italian bread in the sauce with the veggies. We served the pasta with one of my favorite wines from Petroni Vineyards in Sonoma.

A photo from my culinary school cookbook on the pasta rolling technique

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