Pass da Homemade Pasta

On the shelf

About 15 years ago my mother bought us each a pasta maker.  I tried it once or twice but all that happened was that the dough got wrapped around the rollers and clogged up the machine. I put mine in a packet on top of my kitchen cupboard and mostly forgot about it.

In December I need surgery that would have me home for a six week recuperation period. For the first three weeks I did absolutely nothing except sleep and watch series.

My inner Chef

MasterChef Australia 2015 and 2016 became my drug of choice. I will probably never make 99% of the foods that were shown. I did, however, learn some techniques. As I started to feel more myself, I decided to try pasta again. Almost every contestant in the top 20 makes either ravioli or tortellini in at least one challenge. To me this meant that it wasn’t as difficult as my previous experience has led me to believe.

The dough recipe is simple and quick.  It is getting the machine not to chew up my dough that proved the most difficult. MasterChef showed my how to fix this. You need LOTS of flour on your rollers. This tip has improved my pasta making skills significantly.

Now if I plan a meal with spaghetti, my children request my homemade spaghetti rather than the box in the cupboard.

Cleaning up

Cleaning this machine has now become my biggest challenge, because I still sometimes forget to put the flour on often enough and dough gets stuck in the machine. The only way to take apart the machine is with a screwdriver and that’s not going to happen. One occasion where I wasn’t able to clean the machine properly landed me with maggots in the machine! I am slowly learning and improving.

I can now make tagliatelle, spaghetti and lasagne sheets! Next up, to work out how to use the other attachments to make macaroni and other noodles. Once I have mastered the basics of all the shapes I will attempt to make coloured and flavoured pasta’s.

One of the good things about making your own pasta is that it can be dried and stored for later use; it also cooks quicker than store bought pasta.

Have you ever made your own pasta? Did you use a machine or did you roll it by hand?