Wednesday, April 9, 2014

The Holy Grail of Carbs and Comfort: Pasta (homemade!)

Everyone has things they want to accomplish in their lifetime. The 'Bucket List' if you will. I don't really care for that term, but I do like (love) lists and make a new list of goals each year. Some are 'real life' goals like paying off student loans but most are little accompliments meant to make life better. Unsurpsingly enough, that means many of them involve food and books. 

I managed to make bread just fine a bunch of times so I moved on to my other favorite carbohydrate, pasta. I of course started with the red and white checkered bible that is 'Better Homes and Gardens' cookbook - I assume this is what people used before they had google. 

I made my pasta half white, half wholewheat flour and I'm not sure if that was the true culprit but this dough was so hard to work. I mean, like trying to bend cold rubber with stiff mittens on. I had to get help kneading it. Because of the crippling arm fatigue, so photos exist of the early stages. 

As a rule, I always wear my harem pants for Sunday cooking adventures

After finally rolling it flat and letting it rest, I aimed to make parpadelli.


...it went a bit wide. In retrospect it wouldn't have hurt to use a straight edge.

Pile o' pasta. And the pasta cooking times were on the page next to pies,
I promise I did not get that confused
After two batches were cut, I decided to try my hand at a few other 'shapes' and drying the pasta for storage.

Sort of linguine...


And bowties / farfelli! There's a sliding scale of success evident here.

I almost feel bad for my little pasta children


Four bowtie, outstanding in their field

I was pretty worried about how this whole project was going, not to mention the wife had asked for lunch about two hours before I even got the pasta into the boiling water. 

Eventually, the pasta cooked, I only burned myself half a dozen times, and lunch was on the plate half a day later than expected.


It looks all right though, eh?

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