Farfalle

I am taking a break from the flavored pasta today (don't worry, there's more to come). The post today is about home made farfalle. It is a pasta shape that the whole family can participate and help and have fun.

Start with the basic recipe for the dough. Once the dough is ready, use the roller attachment to open it, but leave the thickness one setting thicker than you normally use for fettuccine (I used setting 4 for the farfalle). Make sure you sprinkle flour over the surface you will be working on, but not too much, or it will be harder for the farfalle to hold its shape.

Make sure you start the preparation with enough time as it can take about 1 hour to work through the dough, shaping the individual pieces.

Preparation

You will need a crimped pastry cutter for the sides.

Crimped pastry cutter

After rolling the dough, use the crimped pastry cutter to cut the dough vertically for the side of the farfalle. Use a regular cutter or pizza cutter to cut horizontally and cut away any excess on the sides to leave all pieces of roughly the same size.

Dough after cutting

Start by separating one piece to work on.

One piece separated for shaping

Pinch the middle of the dough, in the center.

Pinching the center

Pinch again, this time joining the sides to the middle pinch.

Final pinch

One down, many to go:

Farfalle is ready

Place the shaped farfalle on a tray before cooking.

Tray ready to cook

Cook the pasta on boiling water and season it to taste.

Final result

White sauce

Salt, pepper and olive oil

Give it a try and have the whole family help.

Basil Fettucine

Following up on the series of flavored recipes, today we tested basil fettuccine. The preparation is the same as Spinach Pasta, except we will be using basil instead of spinach.

Ingredients

• 2 whole eggs
• 1 handful of fresh basil leaves
• 1.5 cups of whole wheat flour

Preparation

In the blender, put the two eggs and the basil leaves. Blend really well but do not sift the results. The color after blending may be brownish but do not despair, it will look good again after cooking!

Incorporate the flour slowly into the egg/basil mixture, working the dough until the dough is no longer sticky to be rolled or extruded.

Final Result

For this post, I just rolled the pasta using the roller attachment and made fettuccine. I garnished the plate with freshly cut basil leaves and I have to say the result was awesome! Hope you enjoy.

Basil Fettuccine

Beet Pasta

Following up on the Spinach Pasta recipe, today I will explore using beets to flavor and color the pasta. The preparation is the same, except we will be using beets instead of spinach.

Ingredients

• 2 whole eggs
• 1 small raw beet
• 1.5 cups of whole wheat flour

Preparation

In the blender, put the two eggs and the peeled beet. Blend really well and sift the results to allow for a soft dough at the end and to remove any piece of the beet that the blender may have missed.

Incorporate the flour slowly into the egg/beet mixture, working the dough until the dough is no longer sticky to be rolled or extruded.

Final Result

For this post, I just rolled the pasta using the roller attachment and made raviolis using a cookie cutter or ravioli stamp.

Beet Ravioli

Beet Valentine's Day Ravioli

Beet Fettuccine

Spinach Spaghetti

Spinach pasta is one of our favorite flavors. It is extremely tasty and soft. Best of all, it is very simple to make. I will show you how to make the basic spinach dough recipe, which in this post will be used to make spaghetti. The same recipe can be used for fettuccine or lasagna with no modifications.

Ingredients

• 2 whole eggs
• fresh raw spinach (washed and dried), about two handfuls
• 1.5 cups of whole wheat flour (more may be needed due to the liquid from the spinach itself)

Cooked spinach could also be used, but the best results are achieved when you use the raw spinach.

Preparation

In the blender, put the two eggs and the spinach and blend them all well. Mix the spinach and eggs mixture with the flour slowly, working the dough as described in the basic recipe. For this recipe, I am using the Kitchen Aid Pasta Extruder Attachment with the spaghetti plate. It is important to get the dough not too wet or it will stick a lot to the inside of the extruder and it will make the clean up much harder.

Once the dough is ready, start feeding it to the extruder in little balls about the size of a walnut. I set the Kitchen Aid mixer to speed number 6. Once the pasta starts coming out, cut it to your desired length.

Spinach Spaghetti

Result

As you can see above, the results are pretty good. Cook in boiling water, paying attention to not overcook it as fresh pasta cooks much quicker. Here's the final product.

Final result in the plate with Parmesan cheese

Below, you can find a few other variations of this same recipe. The spinach lasagna is extremely good and will receive a post in the future.

Spinach Fettuccine

Spinach Lasagna

Easter Carrot Pasta

To celebrate Easter, I was going to make carrot pasta. My son suggested we cut it in shape of a carrot, so we found a cookie cutter that closely resembled the shape. It was a great change in the routine! This is a variation of the basic recipe.

Ingredients

• 2 carrots
• 1.5 cups of whole wheat pastry flour
• 2 whole eggs

Preparation

1. Peel the carrots and break them into pieces. 
2. Add the pieces with the eggs into the blender and blend the it really well. 
3. Sift the result to extract only the juices. You can save the pulp for muffins, cakes, etc...
4. Mix the extracted juice with the flour as described in the basic recipe
5. Knead and open the dough with the desired thickness (I used setting number 4)

Cutting

Use the cookie cutter to cut the shapes out of the rolled dough. Make sure you put some flour on the cutter to help cut the pasta more easily.

Carrot shape

Result

We seasoned the pasta with salt, pepper and olive oil and finished with some grated carrots on top.

Final result with grated carrot on top

Basic Fettucine

This is my basic pasta recipe which will be used often in future posts. I like my pasta to be soft, so I only use whole wheat pastry flour and eggs. If you don't like the past to be so soft, you can substitute a third of the flour for semolina flour.

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups of whole wheat pastry flour
• 2 large eggs

 These quantities are for a half recipe which I use at home and it is enough for3 servings.

NOTE: If you don't want to use whole wheat pastry flour, you can use regular all purpose flour. If you only have regular whole wheat flour, try using 1/3 whole wheat flour and 2/3 regular all purpose flour.

Preparation

Place the flour on the surface where you will be working with the dough and make a hole in the middle. Crack the two whole eggs as shown below:

Flower and eggs

After you placed the eggs in the middle of the flour, use a fork to whisk the eggs whites with the yolk:

Whisked egg whites and yolk

Slowly use your hands or a fork to incorporate the flour into the eggs:

Mixing the flour and the eggs

After you incorporate the eggs with the flour, start kneading the dough with the end of your palm:

Kneading the dough

Keep kneading the dough until it is no longer sticking to your fingers. You may need to add additional flour, depending on the humidity and egg size. I like to leave my dough a bit sticky and use some extra flour when opening it:

Dough ready to rest and open

If you are not going to roll the dough immediately, wrap it with some clear plastic to avoid the outside from drying and becoming too hard.

When ready, cut pieces of the dough, flatten a bit and start rolling it. Start at setting 1 and work towards the desired thickness (rolled to setting 5 in the pictures):

Rolling the dough open

Once you have rolled all the dough, you are ready for cutting the fettucine. I use the Fettucine cutter attachment and have the pasta pot of water already boiling when I start cutting:

Cutting the pasta

After cutting, place the cut pasta into the boiling water and cook to your preference. Remember that fresh pasta cooks much quicker than dried pasta.

Here's the result of the hard work, seasoned with salt, pepper, olive oil and some fresh Parmesan cheese:

Fettucine with olive oil, salt and pepper

Hope you enjoyed it. In the future, I will be showing variations, using different ingredients and additions to the basic recipe.

About myself

My name is Francisco and I love pasta. Since I was a little boy, my favorite food has always been pasta. We would go every Sunday to a restaurant and I would order my favorite pasta at the time: taglierini al sugo.
 I grew into other pasta shapes over time: caneloni, lasagna, gnocchi, capelletti, rondelli. I used to visit one of my uncles who made his own pasta. I remember the old machine with a manual handle and the pasta drying until cooking time. Good memories.

A couple of years ago, while my wife was traveling, I decided to make my own pasta for the first time. It wasn't the greatest thing on Earth but it started the seed. I started making pasta every Sunday and I have been doing it ever since. On father's day of that year, I got the Kitchen Aid Pasta Roller and Fettuccine cutter for the Kitchen Aid mixer we own. This made the making process much easier and the results look awesome. Later, I got a new toy that is a pasta press that makes other shapes such as spaghetti, rigatoni and bucatini.

I will be posting my experiences making pasta, with different shapes and flavors.

Christmas Pasta: tomato and spinach fettuccine

Hope you enjoy the blog, the pasta ideas and recipes. Be sure to stop at my wife's blog as well: http://kitchenspace.blogspot.com