pasta caring

I thought my cup could not overflow any more when I was given a KitchenAid mixer. All those recipes I have never cooked because I am too lazy to whip egg whites! All the times I made up a Madeleine recipe in order to circumnavigate the real recipe, as it requires 10 minutes of hand-beating! And all the times I have gnashed my teeth in frustration over fridge-cold butter that was too hard to mix... now all a thing of the past.

Well my cup overflowed just that little bit more when the gent gave me a pasta attachment for my birthday: more toy to play with, resulting in my favourite of carbs!

I once made pasta when I lived in Wimbledon, and spent a whole afternoon fighting a mean, uptight ball of dough. My hands were red raw from using a rolling pin to do all the rolling, and the resulting pasta fine to eat... if very chunky.

Yesterday I took no chances and bought the nicest '00' flour that John Lewis foodhall had to offer. The whole process took longer than I thought, given that I was using a machine, but this was down to a first-timer exploring how to do things.

I poured 440g of flour on the work surface, made a well in centre for 3 large eggs and threw over 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Using a fork initially, I scrambled the eggs, then began to draw in a little flour so that the central well slowly increased, as the egg mix turned more doughey. Eventually I gave up the fork and used my hands to pull in the last of the flour, kneading briefly before putting in the Kitchen Aid with a dough hook.

This is clearly a supremely lazy move, but I wanted to see how the hook worked. Brilliantly, is the answer. It didn't look as vigorous as hand-kneading, but the result was a nice, elastic dough: the kind I read about in recipes, but have never made!

The dough rested for 20 minutes whilst I cleared up (our kitchen is tiny) and added the pasta rolling attachment to the mixer. Dividing the dough into four, I worked on one piece at a time, dropping it through the roller on setting one. I fed it through, doubled it over then repeated until satisfied. Once all four pieces of dough had been rolled I repeated the process on settings 2 and 3 - incrementally thinner - until I seemed to have reams of pasta sheets! I dusted liberally with flour to prevent them sticking.

The cutting was the easiest part of all. Feeding each sheet of pasta through the cutter attachment was very quick, and I roughly shaped the tagliatelle into nests on a plate, or hung over a clothes drier.

How did it taste? Springy and firm. Delicious. It was too thick to be elegant, but I really liked it and it tasted good in the cream and salmon sauce that the gent put together. Next time I am going to experiment with rolling the pasta more finely, and also try making filled pasta: my absolute favourite.