Homemade Pasta

My husband enjoys cooking. In fact, he probably cooks more often than I do. More and more I notice that he makes simple dishes more in line with those he grew up eating.He always says, "We had pasta EVERY Sunday, then again on Tuesday and likely one more night during the week." He recalls that there was some sort of meat floating in the sauce more for flavor than for sustenance. Often, the meat was rabbit caught by one of the uncles.

His Grandmother would sit at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and hand press 1,000's of handmade cavatelli at a time for Sunday dinner. She made it look so easy, and they would all be gone by evening's end! We have never been able to master cavatelli. Dom has tried making eggless pasta but the method eludes him.

We make homemade pasta with a little Atlas hand crank machine which is quite good and well worth the mess it makes of the kitchen. We have made ravioli with the hand cranked pasta sheets as well. Homemade ravioli is SO much better than anything you can buy, but it is a labor of love. Here is our recipe:

Homemade Pasta
3 large eggs
5 cups flour
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 cup cold water

On a clean counter top or pastry board, form a mound of flour. Make a well in the mounded flour and break in eggs and add oil. Slowly add in water. With hands (or a fork) gently start mixing together working from the inside out until all flour is incorporated. If dough feels to dry and a few drops of water if dough feels too sticky add a small amount of flour until the correct consistency is achieved. If using a pasta machine, divide the dough into thirds add start feeding through the machine. Follow the directions for your pasta machine. If making by hand, roll out dough with a rolling pin onto a floured surface until pasta is about 1/8" thick. Slice into “noodle” lengths with a knife or use cookie cutters to make fun noodles. To cook pasta, plunge noodles into boiling water and check 30 seconds after water returns to a boil. Do not cook for more than a minute.

Reviving Stale Snacks

Sometimes snacks get stale before you have finished the container. Especially if you live in a house with teenagers who never fully close the container! You can bring them back to an edible state by heating them in the oven. This works wonderfully for snacks like crackers, Chex mix, tortilla chips, pretzels and even whole loaves of bread. (If you have stale sliced bread you are better off making toast, crostini or bruschetta.) Spread the stale snacks out on a cookie sheet and place in a 350o F oven. Let them bake for about 10 minutes and then remove from the oven and let cool completely. Once cooled the snacks should be crispy and refreshed.

You can use this method with fresh nuts like almonds, peanuts, walnuts, etc. However, because nuts have a high unsaturated oil content, they can oxidize quickly on exposure to heat, light and air which creates rancidity that makes them smell and taste bad. Roasted, chopped, and ground nuts go rancid much rapidly than whole raw ones. Always smell nuts before you eat them or add them to recipes to be sure they are fresh. (I store nuts in the freezer until I need them.)