Mar 15, 2010
Pasta Making 101
On Friday, Bossy got together with her mom and Bossy’s friend Martha to make pasta from scratch. Actually it wasn’t from scratch, it was from eggs and flour and a little bit of oil, but Bossy is getting ahead of herself. It had been quite a while since Bossy and her mom made pasta, and everyone was very excited.
First Bossy and the grrlz gathered at Bossy’s mom’s house:
Next they measured their flour and beat their eggs until frothy:
And then Bossy and her mom and Bossy’s friend Martha decided maybe they should read the recipe:
One small issue with the recipe Bossy’s mom inherited from an elderly Italian woman decades ago, is that the ingredient list calls for five scoops of flour. All is well and good if a scoop equals one cup – but what if scoop refers to an entirely different unit of measurement, for instance a half-cup or a
quarter-cup or an old oatmeal canister or Do you see where Bossy is going with this?
So this would be about the time Bossy’s friend Martha announced she was going to follow a different recipe — a recipe that had recipe words in it.
Next the liquid ingredients — in this case egg and oil — get incorporated into the dry by first pouring them into a well created in the center of the flour:
Except seconds after this photo was taken the egg began leaking out from underneath the mound of flour, and the same thing happened to Martha:
But the three girl women grrlz pushed forward regardless, doing their best to incorporate the flour and egg mixture into something they could knead.
The three persevered, because in the pasta-making world, the more you work the dough, the better. This is not the case with pie dough. And in no time, where no time equals lots and lots of time with even more time, their dough was off resting while the women waited:
While Bossy’s mom and Bossy’s friend Martha drank wine and talked and sketched and laughed, Bossy diligently pored over the pasta machine’s instructions to refresh her memory:
After the pasta had rested Sister mercy if it was the pasta that needed resting, the girls prepared the dough for insertion into the hand-crank pasta machine.
The idea is to move small flats of dough through the pasta press, increasing the degree to which the pasta is pressed with each pass of the dough, until finally feeding the dough through the sharp tines which create the cuts in the pasta and lord you have no idea how difficult it was. The pasta making, yes, but the formation of that last sentence, even more so:
When the pasta making was complete and the fettucine drying which took approximately one lifetime plus a borrowed lifetime, Bossy retired back to her house to prepare the meat sauce for that night’s communal dinner.
And Bossy will tell you all about that dinner after she recovers. For instance in the next lifetime. Or the next.
Brings back childhood memories when my Mom and her friends used to make pasta and hang it all over the kitchen. I was too young to notice if they were drinking wine. Hmmm. My Mom and her friends used to also make cinnamon rolls. Now that was awesome…fresh cinnamon rolls everywhere!
So, did Bossy ever retrieve her consisting Doug from her conical skape?
I like the part in the instructions about kneading until you have a “consisting doug”. Hmmm.
It actually looks really good. Is that what foolproof means? Not that I’m calling you three chefs…you know what I mean. Sometimes no matter how hard I try to mess up, it comes out okay. Like a miracle or something!
So many wonderful things, all crammed into one shining moment of blogdom.
1. I love BossysMom’s kitchen. Especially the clear containers in the 1-2-3 photo.
2. Have never considered making pasta before. Doesn’t it just come in clear plastic bags, hard and stiff and lifeless? But I’d do it if I could join in with Martha, Bossy, Wine, and BossysMom.
3. That pasta-drying rack: I also never knew something like that existed.
4. The “lord you have no idea how difficult it was” sentence? I totally didn’t follow it.
5. Apparently I’m not the sharpest knife in the proof-reading drawer, unlike Stephanie and Amy. I saw neither Doug nor his cousin, consisting Doug. I loved this. Good job.
I’m currently living in an apartment in Barcelona where the recipes are in metric, my experience is in cups/spoons and the kitchen here has neither cups/spoons or scales. Still, I made doughnuts for the first time and they were GREAT!. Fried and covered with sugar, I mean, come on, how could they not be great? I have the same pasta machine as bossy’smom and it is a work-out to use it.
That looks really fun, esp the drinking wine while pasta rests.
Love Bossy’s mom’s kitchen and the pasta drying rack, does she also use that to dry clothes?
Cooking is so much fun with friends and Chef’s Little Helper!
That’s a nice way to spend the day. But I have to confess i BUY pasta. That much pasta drying + dogs = up all night for frequent doggy colon blowouts.
The pasta/clothes drying rack is awesome. I use it all the time. Thank you, IKEA.
As une single person, moi used to come home from work, make the pasta and be eating within a half hour of walking through the door. Why, no, this is not bragging. Moi would not brag. Much.
holy cow.
I love to make bread, pizza dough, etc. etc. but pasta? that looks way long and complicated, when you can buy a pack of fresh pasta (not dried) for about 4 bucks at the grocery store.
thank you for writing this post. it will come in handy if I ever have the idea that pasta making would be a fun activity.
oh, and about the pasta machine instructions? It’s a good thing you didn’t follow the French ones, as more than half the information is missing. the French text covers approximately the first two lines of the English paragraph above it.
That looked like fun, and kudos to Boozy and the grrlz for not ending up covering the entire kitchen and each other with good flour and consisting doug!
After Einstein invented the bra and dried pasta stored in plastic bags and boxes at the supermarket, he had more time and less in the way of gravitational forces to invent things like, the atomic bomb.
I’m amazed that hollygee in #11 can make pasta by herself! I got inspired last week and had to drag the husband away from the tv news AND enlist every chair back in my kitchen and dining room to hold the noodles. I think you guys did a fabulous job. Great post.
ps – my kitchen did end up covered in flour…
Decades and decades ago, ugh, now I feel really old.
This is so charming and makes me wish so hard that my mom and I lived in the same state!!!
Two words…Kitchenaid….Pasta attachment, OK, that was three words. but these three words will change your pasta-making life!
I can spend all fracking Saturday making Audubon Ron’s Beef Bourguignon or however you spell it, but you could NOT make me make noodles. I’d be more than happy to pour, however. Looks like a blast.
My mom once spent an entire day making ravioli and then we ate all 100 of the little things in about a minute. She never made homemade pasta again. Like Bossy, I hate to read recipes and love to drink wine, so I just head straight to Fitzwater Cafe (a little restaurant by the owners of the Saloon), order a few dozen of the most heavenly fresh ravioli on earth to go, and cook them up at home. But it did look like y’all had a fun time.
Man, you have so much fun! I need to take a page out of the Bossy book.
Bellisimo!
Oh Lord – am stuck on the recipe in “English” … ‘knead by hand until you have a consisting doug’. Is this recipe for pasta or for hard-up spinsters?
BB
I so want to hang out at Bossy’s mom’s house too!! Good times!
I hope that for the Bossy (No) Book Tour, Bossy will be traveling with the pasta, yes?
Barb said it all…Kitchen Aid and the pasta attachment changed my life. I no longer need three hands.
P.S. (just a tip) Flat leaf parsley is much better for your sauce recipe. You’ll like it.
P.P.S. That IKEA work bench that your mom bought is da bomb! Me want.
Im highly impressed with your pasta make skills. Even if it took a village and TWO LIFE TIMES to complete!
I’m jumping on the “I want to make pasta with Bossy and Bossy’s mom” bandwagon.
The pasta machine looks like an instrument of torture. Guaranteed I’d end up with flattened fingers messing with that thing.
My two words for wonderful pasta? Olive Garden!
I am wayyyyyy too lazy to ever attempt making pasta, but I salute you for doing so! It looks delicious!
I am told my grandmother made the best strudel (she was German), which sounds very much like the pasta adventure. My brothers knew her much longer than I did and called her (behind her back) The Noodle Lady.
I’ll refrain from calling you The Pasta Lady, or Pasta Bossy, or anything like that. Promise.
In fact, the only time I’ve made pasta was when we gathered like villagers to produce pumpkin ravioli in a sage butter sauce. Sure, you can buy pasta at the store, but the point of all this was the experience, yes? And the wine, no? And the spending time with Mom. And fodder to write about. LOVE this site!
I got stuck on forming a “conical skape”, must have been the merlot
This is exactly how I imagine making pasta would be.
Did you have Italian opera on? We always had Verdi or Puccini full blast when my dad used to make pasta. We dreaded it because he used old broom handles purched on chair backs to dry the pasta. The broom handles roled off if you made any movement ANYWHERE in the house. And then the “bad words” roled off Dad’s tongue. But it was yummy! My dad makes the world’s best meatballs.
Oh my word. I need to take a nap, this was a ton of work.
Hopefully it was delicious work!
what a hell of a lot of work.
i don’t think i’ll EVER make pasta.
but i really enjoyed the story!
Sauce looks yummy, booze would look yummier if it was white, and Bossy’s mom’s shoes? Caaauuuttte!
I needed a nap (well that and a glass of wine!) after reading all that. And here I had been thinking that making pasta would be a FUN and ADORABLE thing for me and my 4 year old to do. Then I had another glass of wine and the feeling passed.
I have never made pasta, but I think I’m going to do that this year. Although, using wonton wrappers to make ravioli sounds way easier.
I’ve been really sick for over a week, and I actually laughed out loud (the first laughter in awhile) over several statements you made! Boozy, you crack me up! Thanks for the laugh, and count me in on the next pasta making day. Too much fun. Anytime you can cook with people you love, (and wine doesn’t hurt, either!) it’s going to be good!
Well, you three had a great time and after all the wine I’m sure the pasta and the sauce tasted terrific!! I think I would have stopped at the table drinking the wine !
That meat sauce looks so good! I think Bossy needs to provide the recipe…
And I love Bossy’s mom’s red and white kitchen floor–nothing like a little good old fashioned linoleum.
First of all, I have seen pasta made like that on TV – where there is no BOWL – and the egg NEVER seeps out from under the flour pile. How do they DO That?
Second – I (I mean WE) got an awesome Atlas pasta maker as a wedding gitf. I dragged it around for 15 years, then I think I sold it or gave it away during one of the our most recent moves. Now though? I kinda want it back. Thanks, Bossy.
good lord those instructions in english weren’t much better than the french! can you say translation??? ever since living in turkey and reading butchered english translations i have thought about offering myself as an english translator proof-reader. someone needs to tell them that their translations don’t make sense!
Now I’m hungry…
Are we supposed to comment about pasta in ten words?
I loved this Bossy…brought back memories of my Mommy making pasta and sometimes homemade noodles for chow mein….She was so smart–she made the noodles and set them to dry and then waxed the kitchen floor so we couldn’t go in and sneak them! Yum–the wine looked good, too!
Or, ya know. You guys could just schlep on over here on a Wednesday night sometime and get labor-free noodles.
“life is a combination of magic and pasta.”
-federico fellini
<3
I see you made Ree’s favourite reads list.. clever girl!!
?
BB
Really loved this…but was it worth it???? Especially when a box of Creamettes is 88c.
Or was it all about the girls?
I just discovered you & was planning to make pasta – but maybe not now after reading this posting (smile). There is something about all that hard work for a wee bit of pasta… but I REALLY enjoyed reading this posting!
Bossy, that looks delish. I would never have the patience to make pasta. Or any kind of dough-y thing, for that matter. Hell, I make an awesome pie but I definitely buy the pie crust.