Pasta: The Best Way to Get Your Loved Ones Together
Making pasta is not and should not be complicated or stressful, and people should not deprive themselves of the joy that comes from making and eating fresh pasta. I'm not saying that you will never buy pasta at a supermarket again, because, let's face it, we all get lazy sometimes, but I am saying that you will enter a new dimension of pasta cookery, and it will change your life.
My favorite things to cook are those that have an omnipotent power of bringing people together. To be honest, this is true for almost all foods and recipes, which is a principal reason as to why I am passionate about cooking. However, some dishes beget sharing and gathering more than others do, and I think pasta is one of those. When I first decided to share recipes and stories, I chose to only share sweets, like pastries and desserts. The chemistry and artistry behind these types of food are what initially drew me to create them and are what continue to bring me back to create them again and again. When it comes to savory cooking, however, I feel it is a more instinctive and subjective process, and, in my opinion, it is harder for me to convey the love and passion I feel for making a loaf of brioche in those types of recipes.
Although pasta falls under the category of savory food, in its most mundane form, pasta is ultimately dough, like bread. Therefore, I decided to get my act together and write an actual recipe and guide that shows you how to make pasta from absolutely nothing but flour and eggs.
Boston, MA. Spring 2018
After a couple of days in Cape Cod and Nantucket, 👨🏼 and I were registered to participate in a pasta-making class at the Boston Public Market– one of my favorite places in Boston, if not my favorite. We were extremely excited. We had reserved our spot weeks in advance, we woke up early to avoid being late, we read up on the instructor and his pasta stand at the market, and even consulted a couple of Italian cookbooks we had laying around – one of which I had stolen from my building's lobby. But, of course, us being us, we were almost 15 minutes late.
We jumped right into our stations, equipped with a pasta machine, a bowl, flour, and eggs. We were instructed to combine our flour and eggs and knead for a few minutes. After that, the chef passed through all of our stations judging our doughs– mind you, we all used equal amounts of the same ingredients. He approached 👨🏼 and me and looked at our doughs. He looked at 👨🏼's first and said, "too dry," then switched his eyes to mine, paused, looked at me, and said, "perfect dough" and walked away. I mean, of course, mine was perfect, what else would you expect. Given that 👨🏼 and me are extremely competitive against one another, I obviously rubbed in his face that, despite me not being the Italian one, I had the perfect dough, for weeks and weeks after that.
Below you will find my pasta dough recipe along with detailed instructions on how to make a perfect dough, like that time I beat 👨🏼 at the public market, which was expected (just kidding, unless 👨🏼 is reading this. In that case, remember when your dough was too dry?).
Ingredients
115 g of 00 flour or AP flour
1 medium egg + 1 yolk
Method
STEP 1. Place flour in a large bowl. With your hand, create a small well in the middle.
STEP 2. Add egg and yolk to the well.
STEP 3. With a fork, start by beating the eggs without incorporating too much flour. Then, little by little start mixing in some of the flour from the walls of the well. Keep mixing with the fork slowly incorporating more flour.
STEP 4. At some point your dough will no longer benefit from mixing it with a fork because it has now become a shaggy dough. Dump the mixture onto a clean work surface and start bringing it together with you hands using kneading motions.
Once the dough has come together fully and is ready for a little rest, it should look smooth and no flour from the initial mixture should remain on your work surface. If your dough looks and feel a little bit dry, don't worry.
STEP 5. Dust it with a bit of rice flour or semolina (if you have it, if not AP flour is fine) and wrap in plastic wrap. Let rest for 15 minutes on your kitchen counter. During this time, the flour will further hydrate, and if it felt and or looked dry, it will fix itself during this time.
At this point your dough is ready. You can do whatever type of pasta you want with it. If you have a pasta machine, you can just run it through and off you go. If you don't have a pasta machine (like me), don't worry, you don't need one to make pasta. Below I will show you how to make tagliatelle with just your hands.
To Make Tagliatelle
STEP 1. Unwrap your dough and divide it in half. Place one half on a floured work surface, and keep the other half either wrapped in plastic or covered with a slightly damp kitchen towel to prevent it from drying out. With a rolling pin, start rolling the dough into a rectangle.
Roll the dough as thin as possible. You should be able to see the work bench through it.
STEP 2. I didn't do a good job rolling my dough into a rectangle, so I decided to trim it. This step is completely optional, if you don't roll your dough into a rectangle you can still proceed to the next step should you want to. If you do trim it, keep the scraps with the other half of the dough to prevent it from drying out.
STEP 3. Fold your sheet of dough in half lengthwise two times, or more depending on the size of your dough. You want to end up with a long and narrow rectangle. Dust a little bit of flour between each fold to prevent it from sticking together.
STEP 4. With a very sharp knife, cut the dough longwise into about 0.5 cm thick. Then, unfold each piece to reveal your tagliatelle.
To store, dust with flour and place unfolded tagliatelle in an airtight container. Refrigerate up to 3 days.
Notes on the Recipe
It is better that your dough is on the wet side when you first add your ingredients. If this is the case, you can always add more flour in small increments until it does not feel as wet anymore. If your dough is too dry and you try adding egg, it will be much more difficult to incorporate and you are more likely to turn your dough into a slimy shaggy mass– trust me, this has happened to me before.
Pay close attention to the size of your eggs. This recipe calls for medium eggs (which weigh 50-55g).
You will think that you are able to roll the entirety of the dough together, as it looks like a small ball. However, you are going to roll it out extremely thin and it will, most likely, become too big for your work surface. If you divide the dough in two pieces, it will be more manageable.
I use rice flour to dust my work surface. Rice flour is not as easily absorbed as all purpose flour, so it makes kneading and rolling out the dough much easier.
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