Once a while, I take time to do real pasta. This is easy, and fun, and fresh pasta beats boxed ones.
For 4 persons.
- 3 cups flour / 375g – prefer 00 white flour, but you can do mixes too.
- 3 eggs – I keep them out of the fridge
- 2 tablespoon of water / 30g – clear, lukewarm
- 1 tablespoon of salt
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
On a board, put the flour, dig a hole in the center and break the eggs in it, start to mix with a fork, then add the oil, salt and water. Once the center is getting structure, you can start to use your hands to work the dough. If the mix is too crumbly, you can add some water, if the mix is too wet, sprinkle flour on it. The goal is to form a ball with elastic resistance.
Cut the dough into 2 smaller balls. To store them for later, wrap them in wax paper/cellophane/ or in a cup covered with a cloth, and keep in the fridge.
To make the pasta, you can use a machine, to get thin and regular pasta (tagliatelle or spaghetti), or roll and cut manually (for tagliatelle).
– flatten the doughs once, add some flour to keep it dry. If the dough is soft and melt, keep in the fridge longer.
– Manually, stretch and roll until very thin, then fold on layers and use a sharp long knife to cut the tagliatelle.
– With the machine, there is a roll to press, and a cutter to slice.
- Put the dough on the rolling press (they are 3 levels on mine), pass it to different size levels progressively. Make sure that the dough does not glue to itself, use flour.
- Put the flat dough in the cutter.
- For Tagliatelle, I use the 3nd roll level, and the wide cuter, for spaghetti, I use the 2rd roll level, and the thin cutter.
– take the pasta, sprinkle them immediately with flour, and put on a drying rack if you have one, or spread them on the cutting board, so they dry a bit without clumping. You can let dry a few minutes or a longer time if you plan to store.
When ready to cook, put a large pot with water to boil, add salt and olive oil. Put the pasta in it, turn a bit to separate them. Cook al’dente: thin fresh pasta takes 3-4 minutes, thicker fresh pasta takes 4-6 min max.
To finish, put the pasta aside, but keep a cup of the cooking water (it has a lot of starch in it). Here are some options that you can prepare in parallel, and finish cooking the pasta in it.
- Melt butter with peppercorn, add the cooking water, then add Pecorino cheese, then pasta. [Cacio e Pepe]
- Garlic, mushrooms then cream and a bit of water, then pasta.
- Butter, lardons, water, pasta and one egg yolk, finish with Parmesan. [Carbonara]
- Lardons, crême fraiche, pasta, egg yolk, emmental. [Normand Carbonara]