At the risk of appearing like I’m not really expanding on my
culinary skills let me preface. I have never made my own fresh pasta.
So yes, while I am repeating one of my all time favourite
Nigella recipes there is a twist, in that I am making Nigella’s companion
recipe for fresh pasta.
I’m glad we got that cleared up.
I also was of the belief that making the pasta would be like
an act of devotion to our Lady Nigella, but I wasn’t game enough to bring that
up.
Anyway, we’ve had the meatballs, I’d guess, about ten times
since we bought the pasta machine and every time there was an excuse not to
make fresh pasta.
“We don’t have 00 flour.” (Valid point).
“The eggs look weird…I don’t trust them.”
“Should we bother opening the pasta machine, we move in
three months...it will get dirty.”
This week we decided that enough was enough.
We went to the groceries bought fresh eggs that we agreed
look nice, grabbed some 00 flour…and a packet of fettuccine just in case we had
a culinary catastrophe.
Early yesterday morning I unpacked the pasta machine and set
it up so that I had no way to avoid making the pasta when I got home.
I arrived home eight hours later to see the pasta maker
staring me down, I think in an intimidating fashion…others would probably
disagree. I knew that it was at the point of being now or never.
I grabbed out the scales, weighed out the flour, pinched in
some salt and got to work cracking in the eggs and slowly combining the dough.
Success! It was starting to resemble what dough should look
like.
I then got to work kneading my dough with great hope, joy
and love for Nigella. After five minutes of kneading the dough I decided it was
sufficiently silky and tucked it in to let it have it’s required rest.
In that time I got to work on the meatballs. The process of
which I will not bore you with as, well, I’ve already done that once…awkward.
Anyway, with the meatballs simmering away in their sauce I
decided it was time to stop procrastinating and to get to work on the main
event.
The pasta.
I tore off the first chunk of dough from the ball, smoothed
it out and proceeded to roll it through the machine.
It looked like the picture and I was filled with more
confidence.
I proceeded to roll the dough through making it thinner and
thinner until I got to the final step. It looked like a skinny lasagne sheet
and I looked like the proudest man in the world…ever.
Then came time to put it through the tagliatelle attachment
and I was overcome with a fear that this was the point at which I would fail.
I cautiously lined one end of the pasta sheet up with the
slicer and rolled it through slowly. After the slowest fifteen seconds of my
life the pasta delicately dropped from the machine.
It was done. I didn’t screw it up.
I then repeated the process another five or six times until
the dough was gone getting cockier and cockier as I went.
I was quickly bought back down to earth when I realised I
was only half way there…it still needed to be cooked. What if the pasta falls
apart as soon as it hits the water and it turns into a dough broth instead of
the dainty pasta that Nigella described?
Horror-stricken I put a pot of water on to boil, salted the
water and waited to see if my latest fear would become a reality.
In what seemed to be the pattern of the day my fears turned
out to be just that, fears. I put the pasta in the water and instead of
creating a gloopy mess; it danced around the pot and cooked perfectly.
When it was done, I tossed the pasta through the sauce,
served up two generous bowls and devoured it knowing that somewhere, somehow
Nigella would be proud of me.
I’m sure of it.
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