Oh my word do I love homemade pasta *grin*.
I just have to say that if you have been wanting to make your own noodles but have thought that it must be a lot of work it isn't! It takes less time than it does to knead, rise & bake bread or buns... honest :)
Occasionally when we are in the city and we're going to be home late I'll pick up some fresh lemon pepper fettucine noodles that are made locally to cook up for dinner and we all love it but I knew that if I just put my head to it I could make it to *grin*.
I started by grating the zest off of one large organic lemon and squeezing all of the juice out of it with my reamer. I then added it to my blender pureeing it along with 1 egg and 1 tablespoon of whole peppercorns until the peppercorns were broken up into small flecks. This makes quite a spicy dough so if you are less keen on pepper I would go with about 1/2 the amount :)
To finish your pasta dough you will need:
2 eggs
2 1/4 cups of all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoon lukewarm water
Place your flour and salt in a large bowl or directly on your counter and make a nice big well in the center. In the well add your eggs, oil, water and broccoli puree.
With a fork slowly start to beat your eggs, mixing them into your broccoli puree and then start to gradually pull the surrounding flour into your wet ingredients until it has taken on a dough like consistency and you can start to work it with your hands.
This is probably the only part of making homemade noodles that really requires any elbow grease *grin*. Keep working your dough kneading in a little bit of flour at a time until you have a smooth and silky feeling dough. It took me about 10 minutes and around a 1/4 cup of extra flour to get my dough to a gorgeous soft green stage. Once you've finished kneading cover your dough with a greased bowl and let it rest for 20 minutes.
While your dough is resting you can bring out your pasta machine and clamp it to your counter so you are ready to start rolling :) Don't worry if you don't have a pasta machine. You can roll the dough by hand with your rolling pin and use your pizza cutter to make strips to!
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If you've jumped ahead a bit and noticed that all of a sudden my dough turned *green* that's because I forgot to take photos of us rolling our dough through my pasta maker this time and I'm going to use the photos & text from my Broccoli Pasta recipe that give you the low down on how to finish making your noodles *grin*. I know I'm a total cheater but I thought why type it twice! LOL.
This is my favorite part. I just love to see the dough work through the rollers into long sheets :) It helps to have a second set of hands but definitely not mandatory.
Cut off a chunk of dough a little bigger than a golf ball but not as big as a tennis ball. Does that work for mental imagery? *grin*. Dust your chunk of dough with flour so that it won't stick to the rollers and with your machine set to the widest width start cranking your dough through. Repeat this step 2 or 3 times at that width dusting with flour as necessary and then reduce the roller width one setting. Carry on rolling and dusting as necessary until you have a nice thin sheet of dough roughly 3 mm thick.
Next switch your handle to the noodle cutting rollers and feed your sheet of dough through the fettucine roller from start to finish. That's it! You now have a handful of fresh fettucine noodles to dry!
I don't have a fancy place to hang my fresh noodles so I use the railing of our stairs covered with tea towels that have been dusted with flour so the noodles won't stick as they dry. Let them dry completely if you want to store them or if you plan to eat them for dinner right away let them hang there about 15 minutes before cooking them. They cook up really quickly! I usually boil them 5-6 minutes but if you like yours a little more al dente I'd cut the cooking time by a couple of minutes :)
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It makes roughly 1 pound of pasta and it was the perfect amount for all 6 of us with fresh broccoli from the garden :) It definitely has some kick with all of that pepper and the lovely lemon taste great. This recipe would be fabulous paired with seafood! That will be my next project :)
PS. Check out the Wholesome Whole Foods and Food Renegade weekly link up for more great recipes and articles :)
Bon appetit!
~ Rosina
