Monday, February 9, 2009

Pasta




For those of you who don't know I am Italian, born in Oderzo, Italy, immigrated to Canada with my parents and sisters in 1971 and Sunday was the first time I ever made pasta.


My mom gave me a pasta machine for my birthday last year but before she could show me how to make it I moved to Powell River so the machine has been sitting in it's box for a year.



The house I bought in Powell River was owned by an Italian widow. She and her family lived here for forty odd years and in that time Maria and her husband raised four kids. Needless to say I felt right at home the first time my husband and I toured the house. I've kept in touch with Maria and on Saturday she invited me over to make pasta. She made it look so easy that I had to try making it on Sunday.


I changed the recipe a little to make it a bit more healthy. I used a mix of whole wheat and white unbleached flour and a no yolk mix instead of whole eggs. The mixture was a bit too wet and the pasta too soft but it worked out OK. Next time I'll have to use less no yolk mix or add more flour but the dough will have to be quite a bit harder.


My original plan was to dry the pasta completely for future use but I don't think I'll do that again. I'll just make it and eat it the same day. The dry pasta is hard to store because it's not as hard as commercial pasta and the savings are not significant enough to warrant all the time it takes to make it, dry and store it.


Margaret


4 comments:

Scrappy quilter said...

It looks great. One of my challenges this year is to learn how to make pasta. I so want a pasta maker or an attachment to my KA, not sure which yet. I know if I was a true homesteader, I'd make it like my grandmother did. However that would never give me time to quilt, scrapbook....etc. etc. Will you make more of different types?

Powell River Books said...

It must give you a good feeling to know the person who owned the house before you, and visa versa. With normal (if there is such a thing) real estate transactions the buyer never meets the seller. Especially for some of the historic homes in Powell River it allows you to feel a part of the continuity of life. - Margy

Anonymous said...

Hi there, I'm also Italiana, moved to Canada in 1977 with my parents and sisters. I've been making pasta for a while now but I am trying to decrease the amount of eggs. I was wondering if you could post the exact measurements of the recipe. Thank you. Teresa

Margaret said...

Ciao Teresa,

My pasta recipe is 2 cups white flour, 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour, 250g of an egg substitute,I used Break Free Nature Egg and one whole egg, 4 tbls of water, 1 tbls of oil, 1/2 tsp of salt. My dough was a bit soft so next time I'm cutting out the whole egg and will add water only as needed. The dough should be quite stiff. The dough did not stick to the machine but I had to lay each strand of pasta one by one so that it was not touching each other which was very labour intensive.

Margaret