Homemade Pasta - The Next Frontier

The wife wanted to go to a garage sale up the street "first thing" Saturday morning. I agreed. Pinned down by cats on our bed that morning, as we are every morning, we finally managed to head out at 9AM (unshowered of course) with a strong cup in hand. Garage sales can be treasure troves of history, nostalgia and good deals but are more often a tour through a neighbor's debris with price tags attached. I'm amazed how some people can actually post signs and ask money for things that belong at the curb. The last few garage sales we've been to felt like we're walking through mini-landfills so I didn't have much hope for this one. Sure enough, there was a lot of neatly arranged junk so I was in a strict 'no buy' mode. While browsing, a box with an image of a pasta maker caught my eye. To my amazement, inside was a pasta maker. It was an Atlas, made in Italy, with a $3 price sticker. I stuck to my principal of not buying anything and everything else was worthless and/or depressing so we headed out. On the way to the car we stopped by the next door neighbor's ersatz yard sale. A passerby would have assumed they had knocked their trashcan over. We quickly left but on our way out the wife brought up the pasta maker. "It's $3! If we don't end up using it we can just give it away." She made perfect sense so we walked back to the original sale and forked out three singles for the Atlas.

The Atlas in action - the first stage of rolling out the dough

I've thought about making homemade pasta for years but have always been somewhat intimidated, I imagine in much the same way people are relcuctant about making a pie crust. The thought of buying a pre-made pie crust is anathema to me so it felt like the right time to take on pasta. I referred to a few of my cookbooks and it looked fairly straightforward. I followed the recipe from Cook's Illustrated's "Everyday Italian" book that uses flour, eggs and water and a food processor. After mixing it requires some kneading and resting. Now it was time for the $3 pasta machine. Not only was rolling the pasta through easy but it was strangely satisfying. The first dish we made was a strand pasta (i.e. spaghetti) in a vodka-tomato-cream sauce. I didn't snap any photos but I can tell you that the texture of the fresh made pasta compared to dried pasta is like cotton compared to polyester. Next we made ravioli stuffed with prosciutto, basil and cheese (ricotta and parmesan). This was a little trickier to assemble and we learned the hard way that you must roll the pasta thin enough or it will be too thick and tough.

The final product, in a basic cream sauce, was excellent and will only be better next time when we roll the pasta thinner.

In summary, I definitely recommend homemade pasta with a roller type pasta maker if you have the least amount of interest. It's not very difficult to use and the results are worth the little trouble. I had been tempted many times to buy Kitchen Aid's pasta roller attachment but never wanted to fork our $120. A new Atlas (or the other Italian one that is readily available) is about $60. Probably worth it but at $3 it was an especially easy decision (with a little help from the wife).