italian suitcase: homemade fresh pasta

52weeks projects: 50/52 weeks

My granny was a superstar in the kitchen, her passion for good food was infectious. I've never been great "tra i fornelli" but living with MrM is improving my skills.

Homemade fresh pasta was her specialty and I'm dreaming of being able to replicate her most popular dish next Christmas to surprise all!!!

Practice makes perfect or at least better. After several attempts, I've found a satisfactory way to make pasta!

Ingredients:

400g pasta flour

200g semolina

6 large free range eggs (room temperature)

Using those quantities, you can make (it took me 3 hours):

- 35-45 ravioli (depending on the size you cut them)

- 200g tagliatelle

- 200g spaghetti

Preparation:

Place the ingredients in a mixer bowl and start mixing at the lowest setting.

Homemade fresh pasta ©italiansuitcase

After 10-15 minutes the dough should be almost smooth. Work it with your hands to develop the gluten in the flour, otherwise the pasta will be flabbly and soft once cooked and won't stick together.

Cover the bowl with a clean white cotton towel and let the dough rest for 1 hour at room temperature. My kitchen's temperature is usually 19.5˚C, if yours is warmer it's better to rest the down in the fridge for 30 minutes and then allow 15-20 minutes to get back at room temperature before rolling it.

Cover the work surface with clean cotton towels and sprinkle some semolina - this will prevent the pasta sticking. Tip over the dough on a clean cotton towel and cover it with the bowl. This will keep the moist and avoid the pasta drying out.

Clamp firmly the pasta maker to the longest work surface you have, this should be clean (I mean literally but also from all the cluttered things: kettle, bottles, tins, etc!); in order to avoid damaging my wood worktop I place an anti-slippery towel under the machine.

Set the machine to the widest setting, (Granny's pasta maker has 7 settings you can easily change moving the small wheel: 1 is the wider setting, 7 is the thinner one) and take a lump of dough the size of a large lemon - leave the remaining dough covered under the bowl - press the lump flat with your fingertips and start rolling 3-4 times, every time fold the sheet in 3 to better mix the pasta, turn 90 degrees and roll again - once folded, you should roll down the pasta from the side where you can see the layers, in the picture is the bottom side.

Homemade fresh pasta ©italiansuitcase

Cut the sheet in two and lower by 2-3 the setting. Start working one half of the sheet and place the other half under the bowl.

Repeat the rolling steps until you reach setting 6/next to narrowest (for tagliatelle, spaghetti or lasagne) or 7/narrowest (if doing ravioli).

If the sheet comes out flaky you need to dust it slightly with some flour and work a little longer.

If you don't have a pasta machine, use a rolling pin to roll the pasta until thin enough. The sheet in the picture is after few rolls at setting 6. For ravioli, the narrowest setting should give you an almost transparent sheet.

It's important that you work each lump of dough from start and finish, otherwise your sheet will dry out and will be unmanageable; dust with some more semolina on top once you've placed your result on the cotton towel.

For ravioli: spoon the filling on the sheet, cut to shape, seal it using some brushes of milk on the edges and place them on a greaseproof paper with plenty of semolina. Don't overlay the ravioli or you'll get a messy lump at the end!

For tagliatelle and spaghetti: work each sheet, cut to shape and place over the semolina dusted towels, separate the pasta-strings from each other or they will stick together. Once dry you can combine them and cover with a cotton towel. They will preserve for few days.