Monday, January 12, 2009
Making Pasta
As regular readers know, I am highly in favor of making my own food - bread, yogurt, applesauce, all of which I made this weekend, and more. The purpose (to me, at least) of making your own food is to have a final product that you trust, and that tastes better than what you could buy. With pasta, I am coming to the conclusion that for the normal cook (i.e. me), that simply isn't what happens. Benjamin and I made whole wheat fettuccine this weekend, the first time in a long while, and it was just as much trouble as it has always been. Flour gets all over the kitchen, bits of pasta cover the counters and floor, and the pasta sticks together or doesn't get cut properly, or some other, new mini-disaster. The end result isn't that much better than what I get dried at the grocery store, and is certainly not as good as pasta I could buy at an artisanal pasta store. And it takes so much more effort that a simple, quick pasta dish takes hours and makes an enormous mess. This is not to say that I will give up on making pasta forever, but it will probably remain a rare event. Best to stick to bread, I think.
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3 comments:
Yeah, ravioli is the only pasta I ever feel inclined to make myself, since I have yet to meet a store-bought ravioli that I really like. Yet have I ever actually made my own ravioli? I don't think so . . . but I keep collecting attractive recipes for it!
The first time I made pasta was with a group of 8 people and it was for ravioli. It was a blast! Old hands and new hands learning new tricks. I have since made it on my own and found it to be just as fun and just as good. I can't speak to using whole wheat, but you can find good organic (non-gmo) flours that work well. I think its as much about the process as the product, but that might just be me.
Hmm. A pasta making party does sound fun. But only if someone there actually knows what they are doing! We have tried ravioli, but have yet to get it to turn out well.
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