Pasta Night

So just like everything in my life I got a little off track about how my next post was going to be about soups and stocks. Instead I had an appetite for pasta and decided to make my own pasta at home. I decided on a beet and goat cheese plin. Plin is a type of ravioli a small pillow of pasta that is stuffed and rolled. There is nothing like putting one whole piece of a filled pasta in your mouth and have the inside burst out with a beautiful filling of warm cheese, meat, or vegetables! This was only my second time ever making pasta from scratch so I was expecting to have a lot of troubles. I read a bunch of different recipes on pasta dough before my big attempt, I went over how to handle the pasta, ways to tell if the pasta is to dry or to wet and the best temperatures to let the pasta rest in. I recommend doing a little research before you make anything you have never made before. Just to prepare yourself for any possible situation and also read a couple different recipes from different chefs of the same dish and see what each of them do different or the same. Okay on to my dinner last night. I recruited a helper or an assistant chef as he would like to be called my 5 year old son Riley. He also insisted on helping while he was wearing what he calls his work clothes...a button down shirt and tie!
     The first part of making pasta have a clean work surface. I have a huge butcher block on my island in my kitchen so I just work off of that, but any good old wood cutting board will work. Start by mounding you flour (yes all purpose will work and most chefs say it's the best for pasta anyway) make a well in the middle of your flour and add your eggs and olive oil. Beat the eggs and oil gently in the middle of the well then with your fork start to slowly incorporate more flour..

After you incorporate most of the flour I noticed it was only about half, your dough will start to form and that's when the fun part begins! Rid your self of the fork roll up your sleeves and start kneading that dough baby. Use your palms and add flour as you go but do not add to much flour you don't want your dough to dry out. When your dough is elastic which means when you pull on it a little and it starts to come back together then it's ready. It will be a little sticky but not much. Wrap your dough in plastic and store for 30 min at room temp, if it is hot outside and in your house I would refrigerate.

After 30 min you can start to roll out your dough. The best way is if you have a pasta roller attachment for your kitchen aid stand mixer which at the time I do not. So you can just do it the old fashioned way that's right with a rolling pin! When making stuffed pasta you want your pasta pretty thin. So thin that when you go to lift your pasta you should be able to see your hand through the pasta. It's all about the filling, you want to taste the pasta but not so much that it over comes the taste of the filling. I put my filling in a pastry bag or you could use a regular zip lock baggie and cut the corner off. Put your filling about 1/2 inch apart. When making plin you have to roll the dough over the filling then roll one more time making sure the pasta is sealed together. Like so...

  And that folks is how you make homemade pasta! Flour your pasta so it doesn't stick together. If you are cooking right away then add the pasta to a pot of boiling salted water and let cook about 2-3 minutes. Drain pasta and then toss in your sauce. This pasta I just tossed in a little pasta water chopped tarragon, butter, and parmesan cheese. The sauce though I did feel had a little to much butter, next time I will use less butter (mental note). If you aren't using your pasta right away then you can freeze it and when you are ready to eat take it from the freezer straight to the pasta water.
   After the adventure of making pasta with my son I learned a few things...1. don't let him wear his nice clothes when using a beet filling..that stuff is never coming out! 2. When your kids are helping make sure you use ingredients like vegetables or things they would other wise never eat because once they make something they will want to eat it!! My son ate a whole helping of this pasta and loved it, if I would have placed a whole helping of roasted beets in front of him that plate would have been sitting there all night!
By the way beets are in season right now that's why I used them. My next post I WILL be focusing on stocks and soups. The soup will be a fresh seasonal spring time vegetable, I'm thinking Asparagus soup with crumbled bleu cheese. I will include a couple recipes with asparagus since this is the peek time for it!
Krystal