Pasta Perfecto!

WOW~ what a wonderful day!

The hubby and I spent the day outside playing with the twins! It was a fantastic day! Followed by a fantastic "new" dinner.

I made homemade fresh pasta with the KitchenAid pasta attachment my in-laws gave me for Christmas. I used the following pasta dough recipe:

Yellow Pasta Dough

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

by Marcella Hazan

1 cup of unbleached flour

2 eggs

Ms. Hazan suggested making a small mountain of flour and creating a crater in the middle of the mountain to crack the eggs into. It was a good idea and probably works very well once you realize that if the crater is not deep enough, the eggs overflow. It was okay, I kept on. I used a fork to beat the eggs for about a minute and then started to work in the flour. I first used the fork and then decided to get my hands dirty - and dirty they were! I ended up have to ask the hubby to scrape off the dough from my fingers with the fork. I then gave up with the "hand" mixing after several minutes and went the the trusty "Big Red" (aka my fabulous KitchenAid Artisan mixer). I finished off the dough with Big Red and then returned to Ms. Hazan's notes.

I cut the dough into six parts (the recommendation is that you have three times as many parts as you have eggs). So, six parts it was!

I attached the "thinner" attachment at the widest setting and started with my first slice! AWESOME! It was so amazing to see it in action. When I was a little girl we had a fabulous restaurant that I went to with my family - Ballatore's. There was a pasta room that had a window and you could watch the pasta being made. I felt like i was travelling through time getting to finally make my own pasta 3o years later! The recipe called to tri-fold the pasta slice after the first run through. Each piece made it's way through the thinner and then I set the thinner on the next smaller size and ran all six pieces. I repeated this until the pasta was as thin as I wanted it. (Which by the way may have been a bit too thin - I later learned).

Off to the next pasta slicing attachment and - presto - we had angle hair pasta! I wrapped a few into "nests" that I am drying and will store for later.

I set aside the pasta and started our sauce. I cut up three bell peppers - red, yellow and orange and one-half of an onion. I sauteed the bell peppers in a small amount of olive oil and then added the onion for a few minutes. Adding one diced garlic clove, I reduced the heat and added browned ground meat. At the very end I added a jar of store bought pasta sauce (we tried Emril's Kicked Up Tomato - it was good).

The pasta cooked in boiling water for four minutes.

Homemade pasta and a bit of sauce made for a wonderful NUMBER 5.

Bon Appetito!