March is All About Eggs – Week 2: Pasta

Today’s eggy recipe post is about pasta. My wonderful friends gave me a pasta machine for my birthday last year (or was it two years ago? Time flies!) and I have yet to use it as much as I’d like. It’s one of those things where you need to practice to get better results, but the fact that it takes a while (because you don’t do it often enough) makes you less inclined to practice.

All this to say that I need to make pasta more often, in part because I need the practice, but also because it uses up eggs!

My current pasta recipe is a mish-mash of the one that came with my pasta machine, one I found online, the one on the back of a package of Bob’s Red Mill durum semolina flour, and what seems to work for me:

Ingredients

• ½ cup durum semolina flour
• ½ cup white flour
• pinch of salt
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 eggs
• up to 2 tablespoons cold water

Many pasta recipes tell you to pile the flour up on the counter, make a well in the middle, break the eggs into it, and mix them in with a fork. I tried that once, and got egg all over my counter. So I use a bowl.

1. Thoroughly mix the two flours and the salt in a medium-sized bowl
2. In a small bowl, beat the eggs and olive oil. I find I need to add 1 to 2 tablespoons of water to have enough liquid to form a dough, but this is partly because our eggs are grocery store small-to-medium sized. With large or extra-large eggs, you might not need any water.
3. Pour the egg mixture into the flour and combine. I use a fork until it starts to come together as a ball of dough, then I use my hands.
4. Knead the dough for 5 minutes.
5. Many recipies tell you to wrap the dough tightly in clingfilm and let it sit for 20-30 minutes. I have good results with simply letting it sit on the counter under a small up-side-down bowl.
6. Once the pasta has “sat”, roll it out using a pasta machine or a rolling pin, and cut it into whatever shape you want.

My long-term goal is to start making home-made perogies, tortellini, or other filled pasta and freezing it. It makes a great quick meal (with pesto or a light tomato or cream sauce) on a busy evening.

The other night I tried the following filling: baked sweet potato flesh mixed with sautéed onions & garlic. Very yummy, but I need way more practice (or better gadgets) for making filled pasta. Folding a square of pasta into a filled triangle and crimping the edges with a fork is the best method I’ve found so far, but it is very time consuming.

More pasta musings to come when I get better at making it!