Almost two years to the day, J and I went to Italy - a longtime item that was on my bucket list. It was a dream. We spent a few days in Florence and then moved on to Rome. While there, one of my requests was to take a cooking class and after searching, we settled on one offered through an organization called Florencetown. This is the exact one we took - complete with a tour of an Italian market prior to the class. We learned how to make homemade pasta, ravioli, bolognese sauce and tiramisu and have since made these items a few times, especially the sauce. Last week I was particularly craving the meal, so we decided to make it as a family yesterday and invite the parents over for a traditional Italian Sunday dinner.
I made the sauce first, so it had all day to sit and come together. In my opinion, the longer it simmers, the better it tastes. Then my crew gathered around the island the island to make the pasta. Some were excited and couldn't wait to get their hands in the flour, while others commented how this wasn't how they thought their day would look. LOL.
Tagliatelle (Pasta Fatta A Mano) - Pasta from Scratch
Ingredients: (serves 6)
3 cups "0" or "00" flour (a softer flour - we use King Arthur's Bread flour)
3 large fresh eggs
A bowl of water for moisture and some extra flour for the surface
Note: We doubled the recipe -- but the rule of thumb is 1 egg / cup of flour per person
Preparation:
1) Place flour on a clean surface. We divided each cup separately so each person had a little mound (1 c.) of flour to work with.
2) Make a well in the middle of the flour mound and crack the egg(s) in the middle. Whisk lightly to break up the yolk while gradually adding the flour from the wall of the well.
3) When the mixture has a sticky consistency, begin to knead with your hands for about ten minutes.
4) We had to add a little water for the dough to stick together - but not too much.
5) Add more flour to your work surface, if needed.
6) Once your dough is smooth, wrap in plastic wrap and place in the fridge to rest for a minimum of 15 minutes, preferably a little longer.
7) After the dough has rested, take it out and unwrap it. If you did all three cups of flour at once, cut ball of dough into thirds. If you are doing one cup at a time like we did, you don't need to do this step.
8) Flour surface and rolling pin and begin to roll out dough until it is about 3 mm thick. This can be a little tricky to achieve - I'm not gonna lie.
9) Using a pizza cutter, cut your dough into slices. (0.5 cm for Linguine, 1 cm for Fettuccine, 1.5 cm for Tagliatelle, or 2 cm for Pappardelle).
10) Making sure your pasta strips are floured well, scrunch them together to create little "nests." These nests are a nice way to store the pasta prior to cooking. I just left mine out on a cooking sheet for a few hours.
11) Boil your salted water and cook pasta for approximately 2 minutes, or until cooked al dente. Serve with your favorite sauce. Enjoy! :)
I snapped this photo right before sitting down....and you can see the steam coming up from the sauce. It was so yummy....what a treat!
