Use your noodle to make some pasta

My husband and son love pasta. If they chose what to eat it would be pasta, meat, potatoes and any sugar. Fortunately for their health, they don't get to choose too often.

Having been raised by a Sicilian grandmother, I had pasta at most meals. And my grandmother made the pasta. Early on she rolled it out by hand and cut noodles with a knife. By the time I was a young teenager, she had acquired a pasta machine that rolled and cut the pasta.

After she passed away, the machine became mine and it sat on a shelf for a few decade. Recently, I took it down and started to make pasta for myself. I used to watch her make the pasta but it seemed complicated so I never paid a lot of attention to the details. What I didn't realize was that it is labor intensive but it's also quite fun...like playing with clay.

It is a time consuming endeavor but in this time of quarantine, we have plenty of time. You can roll and cut the pasta by hand or you can use an old school roller machine and a third option is a pasta maker attachment for a Kitchen Aid mixer.

Whatever you use, have fun with it.

Basic Pasta Recipe

4-6 Servings

• 2 cups flour, plus extra for rolling the pasta
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 large eggs

1. Mix the flour and the salt
2. Make a deep well in the middle of the flour. Crack the eggs into it and whisk them to combine.
3. Begin gradually pulling in flour from the bottom and sides of the pile of flour. When you have put in enough flour, it will start to become a very soft dough. 
4. Start folding the dough  in on itself, flattening, and folding again.  Begin kneading the dough, adding flour if you need to. Keep kneading it until it is elastic and you don't see many air bubble when you cut it.
5. Put the ball of dough in a clean bowl and cover it and let it sit for at least 30 minutes.
6. Sprinkle a baking sheet generously with flour and scrape the ball of dough on top. Cut it into quarters, dust with flour, and cover with a clean dishtowel.
7. Set your pasta machine to the thickest setting.
8. Flatten one of the pieces of dough into a thick disk between your hands and feed it through the pasta roller. Repeat once or twice. Fold this piece of dough into thirds, like folding a letter, and press it between your hands again. With the pasta machine still on the widest setting, feed the pasta crosswise between the rollers once or twice more until smooth. 
9. Start changing the settings on your roller to make the pasta thinner and thinner. Roll the pasta two or three times at each setting, and don't skip settings. If the pasta gets too long to be manageable, slice it in half. 
10. Cut the pasta.

You can cook the pasta immediately, by bringing a large pot of water to a boil, salting it (my grandmother used to say it should "taste like the sea"),  and cooking it for 4-5 minutes.
If you want to dry it, lay it over a clothes drying rack, coat hangers, or the back of a chair, and let air dry until it's completely brittle. Store it in an airtight container for several weeks.
Finally, if you're going to either freeze flat in long noodles or in the shape of a bird nest. Put the pasta on a baking sheet in the freezer until completely frozen. It can be stored in an airtight container for a couple of months.