Homemade Pasta

Our good friend Ashley was in at Thanksgiving from school and asked if she could come down and make pasta when she came back for Christmas and we replied you bet.  So she came down along with her mother and grandmother and the ladies had a not so traditional (at least for us) Christmas Eve pasta making party.  The recipe we used was a combo of several basic recipes which makes six good servings.

Pasta Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour

4 eggs

1 teaspoon salt

1-1/3 tablespoon olive oil

1-1/3 tablespoon lukewarm water

Directions:

Insert the metal blade of the food processor.  Place all of the ingredients in the bowl.  Pulse until the mixture begins to come together and form a ball, adding more water if needed.  Remove the dough and knead lightly until is smooth and elastic.  Divide the dough into 4 balls, cover, and let rest 30 minutes.

From this point, we used the pasta machine and followed the process from this link.  

We hung them on our professional pasta rack to dry – it doubles as a clothes rack at times.  We allowed it to dry a little too long and some of it broke as we were removing it from the rack - Coco cleaned up the pieces that landed on the floor.

For the sauce, I used our standard marinara recipe to which I also added some meat balls the last hour of cooking.

Since Ashley’s mom is not a fan of tomato sauce, we whipped up a little Alfredo Sauce for her using this recipe, adapted from Better Homes and Gardens:

Ingredients:

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1 cup heavy cream

1 clove garlic, mashed a little to peel

1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Freshly ground black pepper

Chopped parsley

Directions:

1. In a 3-quart saucepan melt the butter over medium heat. Make sure the butter does not brown -- one of the hallmarks of this sauce is its creamy white color.

2. Carefully pour the cream into the saucepan with the melted butter. Add the garlic and S&P to taste.

3. Bring the butter-cream mixture to boiling; reduce the heat to a simmer and cook the sauce gently until it begins to thicken, stirring frequently. This will take about five minutes.

4. Remove the pan from the heat, take out the garlic, and stir in the Parmesan cheese until it is fully incorporated into the sauce.

We sided the pasta with a delicious Ashley salad and a loaf of bread from the Marco Island, FL farmers market via the freezer.  This is my plate which I had stirred a little before remembering to take the shot.

Everything was delicious and got rave reviews from the diners plus Ashley got her pasta making fix.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

12/24/14 event date