Work in Progress

After hearing about our failed pasta-making experience with the Kitchen Aid mixer, my mom graciously offered me her old metal, manual crank pasta maker. But really, I think she just wanted to clear stuff out of her garage.

Back in 1990 or so, we got this pasta maker and I remember the fun we had as a family making homemade pasta, drying it on broom handles spread across two chairs and eating fresh angel hair pasta with shrimp fra diavlo. After the Kitchen Aid debacle, Glenn was skeptical.

We made the pasta (mostly) following the package instructions for the semolina and then turned our attention to the pasta cranker. Basically, you divvy up the dough into thirds and then crank it through a flattener, progressively thinning the dough the more times you feed it through. Once the dough is thin and plat, the machine gives you the option of cutting it yourself (for lasagna), or feeding it through one of two presses -- one for angel hair, the other for fettuccine. Like the Kitchen Aid, this was a two-man job -- one to feed the dough through, the other to catch the output. It was a fettuccine kind of night! We weren't making a big batch, so we were able to dry ours on the back of the kitchen chairs.


After it had dried for 10-15 mins, we dropped the pasta into boiling, salted water and cooked 3-4 mins until tender. We dressed the fettuccine with olive oil and topped with roasted vegetables (portobella mushrooms, eggplant, onion, red pepper) and some dice mozzarella. The veggies were super easy -- cut into 2" pieces, toss with olive oil, salt & pepper on a baking sheet and roast 20-25 mins at 425.

The veggies were wonderful, the pasta consistency perfect, but the pasta itself needed just a little more flavor. We are still refining our technique, but it's the journey, not the destination that counts, right?