Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Fresh Pasta and Tomato Sauce-Italy

Whenever someone says Italy, the first thing anyone thinks about is pasta and pizza. You may be hesitant to make fresh pasta because you think it'll be too hard or time consuming. But if a beginner like me can make pasta from scratch so can you. Pasta dates as far back to Sicily in 1154, it's also a staple iteam in and Italian household and can be found anywhere you turn in Italy.

To make the pasta you're going to need:
3 cups of all purpose flour
1/4 cup of olive oil
1/8 of a teaspon of kosher salt
3 egg yolks
water

Start by putting your three cups of flour in a food processor with your salt and egg yolks and start pulsing it till all the egg yolks have been broken up.
While still pulsing slowly start pouring in your olive oil, once it's completely incorporated stop and open the lid from the processor and pick up a bit of dough. If you can form it into a ball and pinch it, and it retains it's shape, then you are done.
If not, then start pulsing again and begin adding water in 1 tablespoon intervals, while stopping every once and a while and pinching to see if it retains it's shape.
After your dough can retain its shape, take all of it out of the food processor and try to shape it into a ball, then wrap in plastic and put it in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes.

After you take the dough out of the fridge, take a board and flour it and your hands. Cut the dough into four equal parts. If you have a pasta maker, run your dough through the pasta maker till it's 1/8 or 1/16 of an inch thin, then run it through again to form noodles. However if you, like me, don't have a pasta maker, take your first 1/4 of dough and role it out to 1/8 or 1/16 of an inch of thickness. Then take a knife and begin to make thin lines and form noodles. Continue this for all 4 sections.

Cook your pasta like you would any other pasta, but since it is fresh it will only take about 7 minutes to cook.

To go along with your fresh pasta:
Fresh tomato sauce ingredients:
1/4 cup of olive oil
1 onion diced into tiny pieces
4 cloves of garlic
3 tablespoons of fresh thyme leaves (or 1 tablespoon of dried thyme)
1/2 a carrot finely grated
2 cans or 28 ounces of canned peeled whole tomatoes
Salt

Start by putting your olive oil in a saucepan and let it simmer, then add onion and garlic until they turned brown. Add in the thyme and carrot and continue cooking. Add in the tomato and let it all come to a boil, but continue stirring often. After reaching the boiling point, lower the fire to simmering and put the cover on and let it cook for about 30 minutes or until the sauce thickens.

Then pour pasta into a serving dish, lay the sauce on top, and enjoy!

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