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In a pinch? Pasta!
• by Anne Cori
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In the time it takes for a pot of water to come to a boil, you can make homemade pasta. From scratch. Really.
Fresh pasta is not a day-long endeavor, but truly a 30-minute dinner. And when it is made from scratch, the pasta is light and delicate and utterly delicious. So delicious that you can always taste the difference between boxed dried pasta and homemade; homemade pasta tastes better in every recipe.
Unlike pie or pastry dough, pasta dough is very forgiving, so it is ridiculously easy to make. If the dough is too dry, add more water. If the dough is too wet, add more flour. If the dough gets messed up, scrunch it together and reroll it. Pasta dough can always be salvaged, even if you think the dough is fighting you.
Boxed, dry pasta is made with semolina flour, but for fresh pasta, all-purpose flour works just fine. The dryness of semolina flour makes it much more difficult to manipulate. (But if you want to use semolina flour, be sure to use the finely ground semolina available at the Italian markets on The Hill; do not use the coarse semolina flour that most supermarkets sell.) I use 1 to 2 eggs per cup of flour, but some cooks like to add as many as 6 or 8 egg yolks per cup of flour in order to make a richer dough. Add a tablespoon of olive oil and enough water for the dough to stick together. Pasta made from 1 cup of flour will feed two people as a main course and four people as a side dish.
Pasta dough needs to be well-kneaded so that the gluten is activated. Gluten holds the dough together and keeps it from breaking when rolled thin. You can knead the dough by hand or in a food processor, but the dough is too dense to knead in a stand mixer. My preferred kneading technique is to use the pasta machine on the widest setting. I feed the dough through the rollers, then fold the dough in half and feed again. I fold and roll until the dough is smooth, glossy and stretchy, about 10 times.
Then, roll out the pasta (no more folding). What makes fresh pasta delectable is that the dough is rolled very, very thin, so unless you are a steroid-infused bodybuilder, you will need a manual pasta machine to roll it. Ideally, the pasta should be thin enough to read a newspaper through the noodle, so I pass the dough through the successive settings of the pasta machine until I reach the thinnest setting. Sprinkle the dough with flour as needed.
After the dough is rolled, cut it into shapes. Pasta machines usually come equipped with cutters for fettuccine and angel hair, but I like to free-form the cuts so that I end up with irregular noodles that look homemade. Shouldn’t your dinner guests recognize that you went through the labor of love to make homemade noodles for them? They will think you spent all day in the kitchen! If you’re making ravioli, avoid the troublesome ravioli cutters, as it is much easier to cut them by hand. Put dollops of the filling on the dough, then lay another sheet of pasta on top. Seal around the filling so that there are no air bubbles and cut into squares.
There is no need to dry fresh pasta, but if it needs to be held before cooking, dust the noodles with coarse semolina flour or cornmeal so that they do not stick together; dusting with all-purpose flour does not work because the moist pasta will gum it up. (Fresh pasta can also be frozen successfully.) By the time the noodles are rolled and cut, the pot of salted water is likely boiling; simply cook the pasta for 1 to 2 minutes, then drain, sauce and serve.
The best sauce? Butter and Parmesan cheese. Second-best sauce? Bacon and eggs (carbonara). Third-best sauce? Chopped homegrown tomatoes, olive oil, fresh basil, garlic and Gorgonzola. Buon appetito.
Anne Cori, a certified culinary professional, has taught cooking classes for more than 15 years at Kitchen conservatory.
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