Not Fasta Pasta

[gemfyre]

Posted to food_porn.

A few months ago I bought myself one of these -


Shiny innit? I promised myself that when we had a house with a big kitchen bench I'd get one and try my hand at making pasta. Well, we found the house over a year ago. I bought the extruder in July. And the weekend just passed I FINALLY got around to attempting to make pasta. And after what I experienced I think fresh pasta will be on the menu a lot more often!

I tried a recipe in my pasta cookbook that involved flour (I bought 00 for the purpose), eggs and a bit of oil. I decided to make the dough in my breadmaker - because it has a pasta setting, I have a feeling it only really works for the recipe that comes with the breadmaker though (which uses water, not eggs). It didn't knead properly but that was okay, I finished it by hand, adding a smidge of water because it was a bit dry.


Pretty soon I had a nice ball of pasta dough. I cut it into four and rolled out a piece to make it a bit flatter.


Then came the fun part - feeding it through the extruder! This was remarkably easy and I soon had a nice, flattened bit of pasta dough. I made this batch quite thick, but next time I'll go a bit thinner. My extruder also has a nifty attachment to cut fettucine or spaghetti without the fuss. I was delighted as a pile of fettucine formed.



First bit. I soon learned that the addition of a bit of flour during the rolling process was invaluable. The rest of the batches were much better.



Just before I cooked it I realised I probably should have stored it some other way, the weight of itself in the bowl made the bits at the bottom start to stick together. I have seen plenty of photos of pasta hung over chairs. I just didn't know how to get the the pile of fettucine from beneath the extruder to over the back of a chair neatly and easily, but I'll have a shot next time - anyone have any pointers?

Luckily it separated when I cooked it.


I combined it with some smoked Tasmanian salmon, homegrown chives and some fresh Bannister Downs cream (plus a dash of mustard powder and lemon juice).



Finish it off with some more fresh chives, sundried tomatoes and freshly grated parmesan.



Buon Appetit!

It was very nice. But I think thinner pasta is the way to go next time, this was a little heavy.

Comments

[redmalice.livejournal.com]

my mum has one and we've done the whole hanging it over chairs in the house. the last time she made some though she just let it stick together a bit as its a lot of effort doing the chair thing and making sure they are all enough distance apart not to stick :)