My mom is the best cook. I know, I know, everyone says that. But really, my mom. is. the. best. cook. People literally pay her to cook for them, so I guess that says something. She's also one of those typical Italian mothers who makes everything from scratch. Including homemade pasta. I never really took an interest in making my own pasta before. For one thing, boxed pasta in the store is super cheap, and I thought it was relatively healthy enough. I even bought the whole wheat kind. However, nothing beats the delicious homemade kind my mom makes, and why make my own when I can just get a fresh batch from her kitchen? |
Boy was I wrong! It's actually so ridiculously easy to make, that I almost laughed and thought "why on Earth aren't more people doing this at home?"
To make my mom's homemade pasta, you need 3 ingredients. That's right, count 'em: 3: Flour, eggs, and salt. My mom prefers to make her pasta with white flour (because my Dad likes it better that way). But for my lesson we used organic whole wheat flour (which in the end, tasted the same as her white-flour pasta anyway).
We made a small batch (small by my Mom's standards), which was enough for about 250g. (All cooked up for dinner that night - see the meal I made in the next post - it made enough for 4 servings).
- For that 250g batch of pasta we used:
- 1 cup of organic whole wheat flour
- 2 eggs (of course we used eggs fresh from the farm that day)
- **Optional** approx. 1/4 tsp Salt
We also used a pasta roller, but you could easily roll the dough by hand, and cut it yourself (I did that a little while she was showing me to make sure I'd be able to do this at home, since I do NOT have a pasta roller). If you are lucky enough to have a pasta machine you can experiment with different styles (like spaghetti, penne, etc.) Since I don't have a machine, I think I'll be sticking to fettuccine, like we made here, which is easy to cut (and my favourite kind anyway).
Check out the pictures below to see how we made our pasta.
| If cooking the pasta right away, it will take about 3 minutes or so in boiling water. However, if you are cooking the pasta later on, like I did, it will take about 5 minutes to cook. (The drier the pasta, the longer it will take). | |