After coming home safely following our Italian holiday and bragging about all the delicious food we have eaten especially the home made pasta's we decided to share our culinary skills with our closest friends.
We did a cooking class whilst in Tuscany and decided to make Bruschetta for entree (a no brainer really been making this for years) freshness is the key. A homemade ravioli filled with pesto and ricotta with a butter and sage sauce and a homemade taglitelle with pesto. So our pasta was to be the hero of the night!
We had never made pasta on our own before but felt comfortable that we could achieve this after our cooking class. My dear husband had bought me an electronic pasta machine for Xmas that was sitting gleaming in the box unused so we dragged it out of hiberation and got to it.
Well the pasta moulded together really well, my husband mixed the ingredients and did the kneeding, I stood by offering my opinion which I call morale support and he calls interferring. The pasta was ready to put through the machine, we decided to tackle the ravioli first. The first piece of dough went through the machine pretty well, not a big long sheet of pasta but it didn't stick to the rollers and it came out in one piece, we were relatively happy. The second piece of dough kind of fell apart, it was a bit holey and it just wasn't right. We tried and tried and eventually gave up on that piece. Our third piece, we played with the settings and it worked wonderfully, we were quite a team, my husband was pressing the buttons, changing the nozzles and I was feeding the pasta through and catching the thin sheets below, it was a wonderful feeling. After about three or four sheets we were on a roll and not caring about the oodles of flour that was spilling onto the floor or all over our workspaces. The pasta sheets were lining up and we were gradually running out of room. My husband went on to start on the next lot of pasta dough to commence the Taglitelle.
I started to prepare the pesto sauce, which is just pine nuts, parmesan cheese, basil leaves and olive oil. I borrowed my brother's $300 food processor but managed to put the blades on incorrectly and took a good 15 minutes of stress (my husband's) to get off. Finally, my husband put the blades back on I poured a handful of pine nuts in to test it (also my husband's advice) and crap, there was smoke, the blade was still not on properly and it had gouged into the plastic bowl and had melted the blade to the bowl. Crap, crap, crap, one mixer down. I went to all of my neighbours doors, knocking, begging a blender but they were all out or inside hiding with their blenders! Quick into the car, down to the local electrical store and purchased a hand held bar mixer.
Back home, mixer out of bag realised the mini blade will take a while to get through the nuts and basil but after a lot of persistance and smirks from my husband the pesto was ready and looking good! Meanwhile the taglitelle was ready and put aside for later. We headed back to the ravioli sheets waiting to be filled but they had gone hard like cardboard!!! We thought that maybe with a bit of water they may be ok, so we added some filling tried to squeeze the sheets together to look like a parcel but it was like two pieces of cardboard trying to stick together without any glue. It was not looking good, but not to be outdone, we tried 8 pieces together with the a few strands of the taglitelle and boiled a pan of water, two minutes later, nothing was rising to the surface but the filling was ha ha. Green blobs of pesto and ricotta were popping up out of the bubbles. Five minutes later and still no pasta on the surface, we dragged out the soggy remains still looking (and tasting) like wet cardboard and finally agreed our pasta was a failure.
We had been cooking for 4 hours, we were still getting over jet lag from our ventures, we were tired, our kitchen resembled something like a construction zone, a white construction zone, flour in every crevice, dried pasta sheets covering every surface. Our hero of the night was a big FAIL.
Pine Nuts $17.24, Basil $6, Parmesan Cheese $9.95 ($33 pesto sauce!!!!!), 1 Food Processor $300, 1 Bar mix $49.95, 1 Roast Lamb $35, 1 Roast Pork $27 (our Hero substitute, a roast cooked in the BBQ never fails to be a Hero), x 2 bottles of Red, Great Great Friends and laughs were free - PRICELESS!!!
And by the way I blame the flour! not the chefs! I have now found the "00" flour and we will not be defeated, Round 2 coming up!
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