Homemade Pasta

I never had old fashioned, home-made pasta. It seemed a mythical food. Seemed too good to be made by me. I thought pasta making would be extremely difficult and took tools. I imagined I'd have to buy that big machine where it pressed the dough down impeccably flat, and then cut the dough into extremely thin strips. 

I never thought I'd be able to do it with my bare hands and in the middle of my lil kitchen with nothing but flames and guts. Well, it's doable. Now breathe a sigh of relief and get your simple ingredients ready. Ladies and gentlemen, they prepared us all for nothing. Homemade pasta is a simple recipe that takes nothing more than your hands, some dough, and a good knife. And a boiling pot of water, but come on, you knew that much.

"Homemade pasta...Once I had it in Italy, I could never not make it by hand again!" We've all heard this from a friend or two, or three. So it seems an improbable task. "NO!" I tell you, we can make it from our simple little American kitchens. If you'd like to feel traditional, just play some Italian tunes on Pandora or some Patsy Cline. Patsy Cline and Frank Sinatra are a jump in time. They will get a millenial girl feelin like she's just been left in the dumps by some hometown cowboy who's gone off and married another gal she went to high school with. It puts you in the mood to pour yourself some ice-chilled chardonnay and cut pieces of dough into tiny strips. It makes you want to be that country wife who has given up everything for a boy with sparkly eyes and skip in his step (you can tell I've had a bit too much wine here myself).

I recently moved into a little home with a little kitchen that didn't quite feel like mine. To warm the heart and to meditate the wanderings, I decided to make some homemade pasta. You know how chaotic moving can be. Sometimes it takes something familiar and repetitive to calm the nerves down. On a sunny day, I warmed up the kitchen with a pot of boiling water and got my fingers into some pasta dough. It felt good, it felt right. From then on, that kitchen was mine. 

Spaetzle dough is a shortcut way around that pasta machine. They are soft noodles with the consistency of dumplings. In fact, it's probably the same recipe but you cut the dough into different shapes. I chose to shape the dough into thin, rectangular noodles. 

What you'll need for the noodles:

• A pot of boiling water
• Rolling pin
• Cutting board
• 1 C Flour + extra for rolling the dough
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1/3 C milk

To start, get that large pot of water boiling with a light sprinkle of salt. While that heats up, mix the flour and salt together in a cereal bowl. In another little bowl, mix the egg and milk. (I used almond milk and it came out stupendously, btw.) Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and mix to create a dough. It will be slightly sticky. 

Get out the cutting board and your rolling pin. Now flour those suckers. What I mean by that is take some flour in your fingers and sprinkle it over the cutting board and over the rolling pin. Lay the dough out on the cutting board and begin flattening it with the rolling pin. If you need more flour because the dough is sticking to the board or your rolling pin, don't be afraid to use more! Sprinkle it like you are a fairy and the flour is your magic dust. Because, let's be honest, what you are doing...is magical. 

Once the dough is rolled out flat, begin shaping it into a rectangle. Now cut strips! Make them as skinny or as fat as you'd like. In this case, I'll say go as skinny as you have the patience for. Now what I do is cut my strips in half hamburger style. Because, I take the 1/2 and stretch it out until it's boxed-spaghetti long. As soon as you pick up and stretch, just put the dough into the boiling water. Do not pile the strips on top of each other, or you will have to start all over, trust me. This will take some time so I split the dough into two batches for boiling. The cooking time itself is super short. The noodles should be done in 5 minutes. Take the noodles out and drain them. Run cold water over them to get them to stop cooking. Boil the remaining half of the dough and add them to the previous half, running cold water over them. KEEP YOUR PASTA WATER! 

Why? Because we's gonna make a bomb-ass cheese sauce with it. Mmmhmmm. 

What you'll need for the sauce:

• A saucepan
• A lemon
• Margarine or Butter
• Cream cheese, goat cheese, or whatever cheese you have
• Pasta water
• A Tomato
• Garlic
• Salt and Peppa
• Olive oil
• Baking pan
• Aluminum foil

Turn the oven on to 400 degrees. Cover a small baking pan in aluminum foil. Slice the tomato, or you can chop cherry tomatoes in half. Place the tomato slices on the baking sheet and drizzle olive oil over them. Add garlic, salt, and peppa. Once the oven is ready, pop those babies on the top shelf. Let them cook until sizzling and slightly brown. 

While the tomatoes cook, get out a saucepan. In the saucepan combine 1 Tbsp butter with 1 tsp garlic. After 1 minute, lower the heat and add 2 more Tbsp of butter. Zest the lemon into the saucepan, add a scoop of cheese, and add 1/4 cup of the reserved pasta water. Mix together until it becomes a smooth texture. Add the juice of 1/2 of the lemon. Mix together. 

Toss half of the noodles you made into the cheese sauce mixture and add the tomatoes once those are done. Give it all a good mix. Sprinkle some salt and peppa, and bippity-boppity-boo, homemade noodles!