Making Pasta

Goal #4 for my 30 Before 30 project was to use the pasta maker attachment that Carol and I received from my Uncle David and his family for our wedding. A big tradition in my family is making ravioli at holiday time, and while I've helped my mother a couple times, I've never been in charge of the project.

So last Tuesday, since Carol had the day off from work, I took the day off too. It was a fun way to replace some of the Saturdays and weekday evenings we don't get to spend together because of our work schedule.

The first step was to make the dough, divide it into balls and let it sit for an hour.

 We basically just followed the recipe from The Joy of Cooking, but we mixed in some semolina in with the regular flour.

Next we flattened the dough balls by hand and ran them through the KitchenAid over and over, each time making the opening on the roller a little smaller.

Sometimes Carol likes to surprise me with the camera. I do not, generally, find this amusing.





Rolling out the dough was a little more challenging that we expected: not only did we quickly run out of work space, but a couple of the dough sheets didn't want to become as skinny as we wanted.

But we're nothing if not resourceful! If some of the dough didn't want to be ravioli, it could become spaghetti instead.

When I realized we don't own a pie crimper (I mean really, all the baking we do and no pie crimper?), we decided to use the pizza cutter to separate our ravioli.

I had cooked a ground beef and shredded pork combo in advance, so all we had to do was ball up the meat and drop it in place, then fold the length of dough over itself.

At roughly this moment, I realized that I was getting hungry.


Thankfully, fresh pasta takes only moments to cook. In the heat of the moment, I forgot this fine point, so the pasta was ready several minutes before my vodka sauce was done boiling.

Having never made vodka sauce before, I did what I always do: followed the recipe in The Joy of Cooking.

And now, I'm hungry again just thinking about it.