Pasta

 Pasta (Tagliatelle)

I got a pasta machine as a leaving present from Thomas Rotherham college but have never been totally satisfied with the results. Now I have time to perfect my technique and make pasta hat I can share with my friends. I haven't made many batches so far but have already learnt some important lessons. 

 

Small batches

The recipe is simple 100g of flour to 1 egg. The flour is supposed to be OO or tipo or something special but I am just using normal plain flour. I will try experimenting with different flour when I get a chance to visit the asian food shop in the nearest biggish town Førde. Yesterday I used 300g and 3 eggs but by the time I got to the end of the rolling and cutting the dough had started to dry out. This morning I use 100g of flour and  the dough was fine. If you need more pasta you can be mixing the dough for the next round as you roll and cut the first. I use a dough hook to mix the dough but it is very stiff. To get the dough started use a spoon to mix the eggs and flour as the dough hook is made for kneading and isn't very efficient at mixing. Since writing this I have read some other cooking blogs and they say that using a dough hook is not a good idea since the dough is so stiff. I have tried kneading by hand and it works fine without too much effort.

Don't add water

Yesterday the dough was too dry so I added a small amount of water. This resulted in a sticky dough and sticky pasta. I have always found this a problem, the strips pf pasta stick to each other and you get a blob of pasta. I am not sure if it was the water that made it sticky but this morning I added a bit more egg when the dough turned out too dry and the pasta wasn't sticky. It makes sense to add more egg rather then water since this is what you are using to make the dough.

Work with small lumps

I didn't realise it at the time but yesterday I was working with lumps that were too large. This resulted in tagliatelle that was too long Today I worked with pieces about the size of your eyeball, maybe even a little smaller, a large grape or a small plum. This makes strips that are about 30cm long much more manageable than the 50cm strips I was making yesterday. I start with the largest gap and work the dough until its nice and smooth. What I mean is that I roll the dough then fold in and pass it through the rollers again each time rotting the rectangle by 90 degrees.This should give a nice smooth edge. If it looks all cracked and untidy your dough is too dry but its too late to fix that so you will just have to put up with a few strips of raggedy edge tagliatelle.

Cutting

Roll the pasta though each of the roller settings. I stop when I get to 6, I think this is thin enough for tagliatelle. When you pass the sheet though the cutting rollers catch the last 10 cm in your hand otherwise you will get a pile of pasta which is difficult to hang up to dry. I would like to drop the drying stage but I find that if you leave the pasta in a pile it all sticks to itself. Now my pasta isn't so sticky so maybe Ican leve the pasta in a pile I will try and let you know. As you can see in the photo I dry the pasta by hanging it on the back of a chair. Don't be tempted to dust the pasta with flour, this will mix with the water when you cook the pasta making an unpleasant soup.

Ravioli

Today I tried making ravioli. First I tied making a strip of raviolo and folding over. This wasn't easy and I got my best results by making them one at a time. I use prawn as a filling but found them too wet. It worked OK when I squeezed all the moisture out of the prawns. I wouldn't recommend this filling as the result is a bit dry. I must get some riccota.
 
 

 

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