Thursday, September 15, 2011

My New Toy

Last winter, when we invited Dennis and Gale for dinner aboard Steadfast, they offered to bring homemade pasta.  

-Where did you get homemade pasta here in the Exumas, aka: the land of no grocery stores, gourmet or otherwise?

-I make it myself aboard GadAbout, he boasted.

I've been thinking about that night ever since.

When I was a hippie, mother-of-the-earth, back in the day, I have wanted my very own pasta roller.  I borrowed on once for a week.  I made every conceivable type of coloured pasta over three days:  carrot, spinach, beet, you name it.  Those machines were expensive and I was inpecunious in those days.  I seem to recall the number 250.....  The years have passed, I have saved my shekles and prices have come down to completely reasonable.  

Hurrah, I got one!


The first time I got ready to make pasta for supper with my new toy, Hubby gave up waiting and made the ready-made store-bought kind instead.  I used the gourmet, authentic recipe from the expensive book I bought with the machine.  D R Y doesn't come close to describing the dough and the exhaustive labour involved in working this stuff.  Another learning curve ball came when I used the super-small cutting rollers.  Boy! was that stuff skinny, breakable, weird.

Today, I used the easy, Non-Italian, easy, softer, super-easy recipe with half soft flour and half duram semolina and eggs.  A much more pliable dough and lots of fun to roll out and cut.


Did I mention one needs super long arms and several extra hands to position, gather, hold and spread out the pasta as it rolls out longer and longer and L O N G E R?????



No, not meatballs, not pesto, not Alfredo.  Tonight we are using up last night's leftover steak in a veggie stir fry.  Pasta goes with anything, right?

9 comments:

Darlene said...

That's a lotta pasta! I tried homemade pasta once a long time ago. At the time it seemed like too much work. It might be kinda fun to try again.

Marina said...

I love pasta! But I never tried homemade!

CiCi said...

Looks like so much work though. And lots of time too. Cracked me up that your husband made the store bought pasta, see, sounds like you have to start at dawn to have home made pasta for dinner.

Sush said...

I love homemade pasta, but I love it best when I've been served pasta made by someone else. I remember years ago, I'm thinking it might have been around the time you first had the envies for a pasta maker, a neighbor was making her own. I could not spare the extra time or money to join the pasta craze. Perhaps I'll give it a try...I'm hoping to learn more from you before I make an investment!

Thanks for your kind words and thoughts while my Sweetheart was down and out, I hope to be able to follow, comment and post more often now he's on the mend!

Hugs~

Jan said...

So what time's supper?

Leontien said...

Yes pasta goes with ANYTHING!

haha!

I think i'm gonna stick with "just bought" pasta for now...

Leontien

Anonymous said...

That's it, I'm coming over to your house for dinner. Man that looks sooo good.

Tami said...

Got one of these for Christmas, then lost the crank when we moved. I certainly hope I'm not going to have to buy an entire new one just to get the crank. I've got Hubby working on a make-do replacement.

I advise keeping your crank in a secure location. Perhaps a bank lock box.

Veronica Lee said...

I've never tried homemade pasta but my mom-in-law uses that contraption to make Chinese egg noodles!