Day 25: Handmade Tagliatelle

I had tried making pasta from scratch about a year ago, and failed miserably ending up with lumpy, stodgy noodles. They were so horrible that the only person I fed them to was the bin!

Fast forward to internship at APB, where the chef and kitchen manager happened to be an expert at handmade past. Over the five months that I was there I watched her work skillfully, and helped her make tagliatelle and ravioli on multiple occasions. And although I never actually made the pasta from start to finish all by myself, I learned the do’s and don’ts and gained the confidence to try it again at home.

Fast forward again, to yesterday.

I don’t have a pasta roller at home, like the one we had used at the studio to roll paper thin, translucent sheets of pasta. All I had at my disposal was a good ol’ rolling pin. But that’s what the Italian Mamas and Nonnas traditionally use, so I wasn’t completely discouraged. I watched this video on YouTube of an Italian grandma making pasta, to understand how to roll it by hand, and then tried to mimic her hand movements and rolling technique.

And this time, Success! I made silky yellow dough, which was soft and easy to roll into a very thin sheet. I cut it into ribbons of tagliatelle, and boiled it like I had learned at the Studio, in a strainer dipped in boiling water, (so its easy to strain off as soon as cooked).

Since I used whole wheat instead of refined flour (which I had run out of) the cooked noodles were not as silky as I would have liked and were soft, but little brittle. But I’m guessing these won't be issues with refined flour, which has less fiber and higher gluten content that whole wheat.

Finally, I tossed up my pasta ribbons into a quick tagliatelle aglio olio e salvia (tagliatelle in garlic and olive oil sauce with sage), as a pre-lunch snack.

(On an unrelated note, it's been a while since i did a #100FoodieDays post, and that means I would have "failed" the #100Days challenge in a technical sense, because the challenge asks you to do something everyday, for a 100 days. But this doesn't mean I intend to give up the project. My aim is to do all the things on my food "must do" list, so I will continue to use the title and hash tag #100Foodie days until I have completed 100 days of fulfilling my food wish-list.)