We had pasta with pesto and cherry tomatoes today. It’s homemade pasta but I can’t take credit for it. My daughter, Alex, should take a bow. No pasta machine. She did it all by hand.
I’ve only tried making fresh pasta twice in my life. The first time it was gnocchi and that happened after re-watching The Godfather Part III for the nth time. There’s that scene with Vincent (Andy Garcia) teaching his cousin Mary (Sofia Coppola) how to make gnocchi which Vulture amusingly refers to as the “sexification of these little pasta pillows.” Just see the film if you haven’t and decide if the scene is inspiring enough to attempt to make gnocchi at home.
I thought it was interesting. I had never seen anyone make gnocchi before The Godfather Part III. If that was how gnocchi was formed, I was confident that I could replicate the technique. I boiled and mashed potatoes, and mixed in flour, egg and salt. I kneaded the dough, cut it, rolled the pieces, and…
In my defense, I didn’t know that pasta dough needed to rest before it is cut and shaped. I thought that only yeasted dough needed rest in order to rise. Gnocchi dough contains no yeast or other leavening agent, so…
My pasta pillows were neither sexy nor pretty. And when I dropped them in boiling water, the liquid immediately turned cloudy and the pasta looked awful. Again, in my defense, I didn’t know that fresh pasta benefits from getting air-dried for ten to 15 minutes before cooking.
Years later, armed with the discovery that pasta dough needs to rest and that cut / shaped dough should be allowed to air dry even for a short time, I decided to try and make pasta again. My husband had just bought a pasta machine and we were going to embark on a pasta journey.
Sadly, the clean-up was a nightmare. Flour and bits of dough everywhere — on the island, on the kitchen floor… everywhere! Worse, by the time the kitchen was clean, bits of dried dough trapped in the pasta machine cutter had hardened and I had no idea how to remove them. I brushed off what I could but I never considered the pasta machine clean enough to use again. Besides, the thought of going through a kitchen scrub of that intensity — again — made me stay away from it even more. Storage. That was where the pasta machine went. Into storage.
I never attempted to make fresh pasta again. I’ve made my peace with store-bought stuff — the best within my budget which means on the pricey side but requires very little clean-up. Alex, meanwhile, wanted to try making fresh pasta. By hand. It’s just dough, she said, like bread dough and pottery clay. You mix it, you cut and shape, and heat.
Alex’s passion for dough is intruiging. In pre-school, the teachers couldn’t make her touch modelling clay (she told me later that it was because other children had touched the clay and she found it disgusting). Then, during the COVID lockdown, she created her sourdough starter. She had already been baking yeasted bread for a couple of years before that so she knew how to work with dough. But sourdough bread? That takes passion. So, yes, in case you’re wondering — she had been feeding us sourdough bread since 2020. In various ways too. She makes pizza crust, tortilla and naan using sourdough discard.
And then she studied pottery. I’ve watched her at work and I was surprised to see her kneading her pottery clay. It’s like bread, she said. You measure, add water if too stiff, you knead, and repeat the process until the clay reaches the consistency that is ideal for whatever piece is intended to be created with it. And — get this — the tools she has in her pottery studio? Cookie cutters (or cutters that look like cookie cutters), rolling pins, scrapers and so many other items that may belong to a baker.
Now, she’s into another kind of dough. Pasta.
Just like the sourdough starter, her re-kindled interest in making fresh pasta was a result of the pandemic. In August of 2020, Selena + Chef started streaming. I’m not a fan of reality shows and I was only vaguely familiar with Selena Gomez (mostly as the Bieber’s ex) but one episode in and I was hooked. Alex and I watched all four seasons. In one episode, Selena learned to make fresh pasta. And Alex said, laughing, that if Selena could make pasta, so could she. And so, she did.
Is fresh pasta exceptionally good?
Fresh pasta has this sensation in the mouth that one doesn’t get from store-bought pasta no matter how pricey. The bite is different too. I suppose that if asked if making fresh pasta is worth the effort, if you’re a curious food lover, I’d say yes. Even if you don’t intend to make fresh pasta regularly, do it occasionally if only to remind yourself of what sets human-made apart from machine-made. There is an inexplicable joy in creating and watching your creation become. But be ready for some serious clean-up in the kitchen. Annoying as it may be, it’s unavoidable.
Things we confirmed after Alex’s first attempt at making fresh pasta
- Resting the dough is a must. After mixing the pasta dough, wrap and leave to rest in the fridge overnight.
- After shaping / cutting, uncooked fresh pasta can be frozen in an air-tight container.
- The cooking time of fresh pasta is about half of the cooking time of store-bought pasta BUT the cooking time of frozen fresh pasta is the same as that of store-bought pasta.
The third observation was from today’s lunch when Alex boiled her frozen uncooked fresh pasta. It took at least ten minutes to reach al dente stage.
The cooked pasta was drained and returned to the pan. Pesto (homemade) and cherry tomatoes (which are not baby tomatoes, by the way) were tossed in. The beautiful dish, brightly colored and richly textured, was served topped with grated Pecorino. Wonderful lunch. Meatless, yes, and if you’re wondering if that satisfied us who are more-carnivore than omnivore, we had the pasta dish with pork ribs.
For those who like pasta without the pasta-making part, here’s how to cook extraordinary dishes with ordinary store-bought noodles:
