My first attempt at Pasta from scratch

As I started to get into doing more of my own cooking, and moving beyond some of the simple things, I thought a lot about making things from scratch.  When you go out to eat it's obvious the places that make their own pasta or their own tomato sauce or tortillas.  The flavor is just different in a good way; with a freshness and taste that just can't be matched by mass produced versions.  So this week, I decided to take on a couple of "made-from-scratch" foods.  The first was bacon, which I wrote about here.  The second was pasta, which was a completely different experience.

I decided to go with the Michael Symon pasta recipe for my first attempt at homemade pasta, primarily because there was a ravioli recipe that I wanted to try.  The recipe itself is easy.  You start with a cup and a half of flour that you build into a well.  Inside the well you add nine egg yolks, and a little bit of olive oil.  Then mix everything together, and let it rest for about 30 minutes.  Then you cut it into 4 pieces, run it through the pasta machine, and it out comes pasta.  Seemed easy, but this is where things started to fall apart, literally.

When I cut the dough to begin to run through the pasta maker, it completely fell apart.  I looked at the recipe and it said it was supposed to be flaky and crumbly, so I tried to run it through the pasta machine.  It didn't work so well, as it just fell apart as it went through.  I went back to the recipe and it said I could add a little water.  I sprinkled some on, and tried again, but it still fell apart.  So I put on some more, and got a little overzealous.  The top was almost soupy, and the bottom dry.  I mixed it together the best I could and started running it through, but now it was too hard.  The whole thing was just a mess.  That piece was totally scrapped, and I pulled out the second.  I again added some water, and ran it through the pasta machine at it's widest setting and it started to work!  I narrowed the setting, and ran it through again, slowly thinning out the dough.  It was still an adventure as I had trouble getting it to do in straight, or I would drop one end and it would tear.  I ended up working that piece of dough through the machine at least a dozen times.  But, I finally wound up with a sheet of pasta that seemed to be the consistency and thickness I was looking for.

Over the next 15-20 minutes, I was able to generate a couple more sheets of pasta.  I then tore them in half and coated them in some rice flour to keep them from sticking together, and turned my attention to the filling.  The thought was that these would be a simple ricotta cheese filled ravioli.  I put the ricotta in the refrigerator over night to let some of the liquid drain out, except when I pulled it out the next day, there was no liquid.  That had me feeling a little nervous.  I took that ricotta, added some fresh parmesan and a little orange zest, and put it in the food processor to try and make a nice creamy mixture.  I pulled out the sheets of pasta and put a few dollops of the mixture on half of the ravioli.  I folded it over, and formed some square raviolis that actually looked like ravioli.  Now all that was left was the sauce.

This recipe called for a brown butter sauce with almonds, orange, and parsley.  Again, something seemingly simple with only a couple steps.  Starting with 3/4 cup of butter, I melted it until it started to get foamy, then added the almonds.  A couple minutes later, I added to orange zest and parsely, then tossed in the ravioli which had been boiling during this time.  Everything was poured into a bowl and served with a roll.

The end result probably isn't what Chef Symon is capable of producing, or would be expecting based on the recipe.  The ricotta filling seemed a little dry and just off tasting.  I haven't quite figured out how to pick out a good ricotta.  And the sauce didn't quite get to a "brown" butter state.  I know there is a fine line between brown and burned, and I definitely erred on the side of not cooking long enough.  It left the whole dish feeling a little overly rich.  But, there was one bright spot; the pasta.  It was actually light and delicious, and I was definitely surprised.  I think the biggest problem was that even though I used "Large" eggs, the yolks were actually pretty small, and I probably should have used a full dozen.  I ended up compensating with water which was ok.  The nice thing is that I now know that I can make pasta, and will probably make a lot more of my own when I do pasta meals like chicken parmesan.  It really doesn't take that long, and with all things, practice makes perfect!  And then I can start adding different flavors to the pasta like spinach or sun-dried tomato or any number of things... :-)