Thursday 28 June 2012

Home-Made Tagliatelle

After watching Masterchef a few times, I developed a desire to make pasta from scratch.  It didn't look too complicated and I know it has a superior taste to it's dried cousin.  Having expressed my new founded cookery interest to my husband, I was very excited to find my birthday present this year was a pasta machine (roller).   I was 10 weeks pregnant at the time and well...  I was a long shot from feeling upto the exciting task, but finally a few weeks ago I made my first attempt.  Sadly it was a complete failure and it had to be thrown in the bin.

After such a miserable first attempt I did what any modern young woman would do and 'youtubed' it.  After watching a few videos (Jamie Oliver's being the best) I was all excited about it again and set to task one evening when the kiddlets were all tucked up in bed.  This time it was a complete success and was surprisingly quick to do.  Hubby and I enjoyed taste testing and I felt I was ready to embark on making a proper pasta dinner for the whole family.

And here we are today!  
Home-made tagliatelle with home-made cheese sauce.


Ingredients at the ready
First we decided to make the sauce so it is ready just to re-warm and pour over the pasta.  Didn't want to risk spoiling our fresh pasta waiting on a sauce.


Measuring milk for the cheese sauce
Whisking in the flour
Grating the cheese
Charlie carefully turns the hob on ready to cook the sauce
So first job was to melt the butter and then when fully melted add in our milk and flour mixture.
We then added some salt, pepper & about half a tsp of whole mustard. (we forgot the parsley)
Once all those ingredients were stirred through we continued to stir frequently until the sauce thickened at which point we added our cheese and garlic.  Once that was all melted and stirred through we put the sauce to one side and started making our pasta!  :O)

Here the boys poured 200 grams of flour on the table and made a hole in the middle.
Then we broke 2 eggs and added them to the centre of our flour
Next job was to mix it carefully together.  We started off using a fork and then when the mixture was not too wet we brought it together into a dough using our hands.
Charlie takes a picture of me kneading the dough.
And now for the fun bit everyone had been waiting for!!!!

Caden started us off by putting the dough through on the largest setting.  We continued to put the dough through this setting about 8 times.  We then reduced the gap by one notch and put the dough through about 4-5 times, occasionally dusting the dough with flour so it didn't stick to the machine.
Eventually the dough became too long so we cut it in half.  We then carried on in the same manner, reducing the gap and putting the dough through about 4 times.  Our machine has 6 setting and we stopped at setting 3, thinking that the dough was thin enough.  As it turned out it would have been better to do one more setting and stop at 2.  (At least that would be our preference.  I've made tagliatelle before going right down to setting 1, but we decided that we'd prefer it a tad thicker.)

Here we go using the cutter setting on the machine - definitely the most exciting part!  :O)
Rosina was determined to try some before it was cooked! (Charlie doesn't seem impressed with her!)
Next we boiled the pasta for about 3-4 minutes in heavily salted water. (sea salt mind - none of that table salt stuff)

And here we go - the finished dish:


THE VERDICT?
Rosina had to give in her vote too!  :O)


We use a 100g to 1 egg recipe for making our pasta.  You can use regular plain white flour.  My next job when it comes to pasta is to tackle ravioli and then white pasta alternatives - ie spelt pasta!  :O)


1 comment:

  1. missed this before - will have to try but have to get the machine first!!!

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