How to Make Pasta

by graphia

Now I don't know about you, but I hate buying everything from chain supermarkets:

1. Living off the sweat of workers and imprisoned animals isn't too flash morally
2. Pasta's a lot more expensive than if you do it yourself
3. It tastes like shit . It's true. Don't believe me? Go buy a pack of frozen peas/'fresh' fruit/dried herbs, and then compare them with the real thing.

This is an easy and I find relaxing way to make more than enough pasta to get by. (Thanks to old ladies in Italy who showed my mum how to do this and the various websites that got me started).

What you'll need:

• Flour
• Eggs
• Other stuff if you want

The basic ratio here is one (1) egg to every one-and-a-bit (~1) cups of flour. It doesn't really matter though; just make sure you start off with less flour than you think you'll need for starters. You can add more flour but it's hard to add more egg.

Method:

Dump the flour on a *clean* bench, and dig a hole in the middle. If you want to add anything else (herbs, spices etc) do it now. Crack the eggs in here and start mixing with your hands; run your hands around the inside, slowly working your way out so the eggs don't go all over the bench. Don't worry if it's sticky or your hands get gunk all over them, it'll come together.

Once the egg and flour is mostly combined, you start kneading. You're trying to make the mix into one solid ball, so keep pushing it down into the bench, squashing it with your hands, rolling it up and repeating. You'll need to keep this up for between 10 and 20 minutes, until the dough is smooooth and strong. Add more flour gradually if it's too wet.

Once you've done this, you need to roll it out. Throw some flour over a rolling pin and roll that sucker flat. You want to get it so you can see light through it - under ? a centimetre if you can without ripping it. If it's ripping all over the place you need to keep kneading it. Roll from the centre outwards, so it gets to something like a rectangle.

Next, you need to shape it. The way I do it is to roll up the dough, cut it into thin strips (1/2 centimetre or so) and then roll it out again, but you can work out whatever's easiest. From here you can either hang up the pasta to dry or cook it straight away. It won't take as long to cook as supermarket pasta, 3-5 minutes tops if it's fresh.

There, nothing to it. You've now got a great, tasty and cheap way to fill out meals.