(My attempt at) Homemade Pasta
I’m a horrible Italian. Why? I can’t make homemade pasta without cursing, yelling, and occasionally throwing something. I can do pie crusts and when the moon is properly aligned with Venus I can roll pizza dough, but there is just something about pasta dough that I can’t quite conquer. I’ve attempted pasta a dozen or so times and have had something edible at the end of it maybe three of those times. On all those other occasions I had to call in Chinese or Thai in order to insure there would be dinner. I have tried a variety of recipes, from Pioneer Woman to Joy of Cooking to Martha to Fabio and the end result is always the same: super sticky dough that requires so much flour that they turn in to a gluten mess once cooked. However last week I tried again, thanks to the /52weeks homemade pasta challenge. I thought about skipping it and just moving on to the baking challenge, but I had promised myself that I would give every week my best try and so I did.
The bad things:
- few survivors – had to make some dry pasta to supplement
- very chewy
- I can’t make pasta
The good things:
- great ricotta filling made with the last of the fresh basil and assembled by my amazing husband
- delicious onion sauce
- awesome arm workout trying to roll out the dough
I used the standard 1 cup to 2 eggs ratio, and doubled it with the idea that there would be enough for two dinners and two lunches. For the filling I had two cups of ricotta cheese, 8 basil leaves, and a touch of pepper. Once I finally figure out this pasta thing I promise I’ll post a real recipe…just not sure when that will be!I’m thinking that if I had a stand-mixer I could get the pasta attachment and then maybe (maybe) I would finally be able to make homemade pasta on a semi-regular basis. Until then it will be good old store bought pasta for this family!