next time, I will spend the $7

Every once in a while, I get a really strong craving for homemade pasta. Luckily, it's usually intense but brief and passes by the time I've convinced myself that I cannot spend $7 on pasta and have walked away the fresh pasta in the grocery store. But, last week, I was subject to a much more durable version of this craving, the likes of which I hadn't experienced since circa 2003 in Cape Town without good access to a kitchen so I couldn't make up my own pasta. Anyway, I now do have access to a lovely kitchen and have recently been very appreciative of what happens when you hand-make things that you would usually buy in a box at the grocery store (or a bag in the grocery store). So I thought I'd give homemade pasta a try, and save the $7. Add to that the recent drool-worthy interpretations of Smitten Kitchen recipes, and I knew where I'd be searching for my homemade pasta recipe.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Not having a pasta maker, the hand-shaped orecchiette seemed like a perfect option. SK actually links to the orecchiette recipe at Delicious Days, which sure *looked* easy. I couldn't find 00 flour, so I purchased the durum flour that DD had rejected. Maybe that was my first mistake. Because no matter how much I kneaded 2 c. durum flour, 2 eggs and salt, it would not form a dough. I finally gave in and added another egg. And then another egg. And then some water. And then it formed a dough. (Oh, and also, the durum flour cost $5.29, so there goes my rationale for not just buying fresh pasta in the first place.)

Discouraged by that experience, I decided to make another version of the dough using all-purpose flour. (I knew that it had too much gluten, but didn't have anything else to try.) That dough only required 1 extra egg to form up properly. Having spent way too long kneading dough for one night, I dumped it in the fridge and ate toast with chevre for dinner.

Rejuvenated the next day, I let the dough come to room temperature while making the sauce. I stole SK's idea of using shallots, but beefed up the sauce with some zucchini and yellow squash. I sauted chopped shallots and garlic in olive oil, and then added the chopped squash. While it cooked, I chopped three heirloom tomatoes and tossed them in a baking dish. I added the squash saute, salt and pepper and cooked everything at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes, tossing once.
It was by far the most successful part of this pasta-making adventure.

I'm willing to admit that part of my frustration in shaping the pasta may have had to do with the fact that I did so while on the phone. Since I couldn't find my earpiece and my phone is breaking at the hinge, it requires a very particular angle of my neck to hold it between my ear and my shoulder. This may have added to my tension while shaping the pasta. Anyway, I started as instructed. And even made it through shaping about 1/4 of the durum dough and 1/8 of the all-purpose dough before my neck hurt too much to continue. The durum dough was much tougher than the all-purpose dough, even with the extra eggs and water, so it was more difficult to shape. However, the pasta turned out cuter. I laid the shaped pasta out to dry (durum on the left; all-purpose on the right).











By this point, I really wanted to eat homemade pasta. So I took the other 1/8 of the all-purpose dough and rolled it out as thin as I could manage. Then I cut it into unintentional trapezoids.I ignored the requisite overnight drying time and popped it into a pot of boiling water. It was pretty much exactly what I wanted out of homemade pasta.

Over the following two nights, I cooked the actual orecchiette, durum version first. As SK mentions, they took forever to cook. (I think the durum version clocked in at 24 minutes, while the all-purpose clocked in at 18. I'm also not sure that the durum ones were actually fully cooked when I ate them.) Both were delicious; however, they will not be added to the category of food that takes 7 hours to make and is worth it. (The trapezoids might have been worth it, since they didn't take quite as long to make as the orecchiette.)
Will there be homemade pasta in my future? Perhaps. Under the following circumstances:
1/ I figure out how to buy 00 flour, since I think that would have eased some of my problems, and I purchase a pasta maker so I can roll out thin sheets very easily; or
2/ I decide not to throw out the 1 1/2 batch of pasta dough that is currently in my freezer and roll it into thin sheets to be cut into trapezoids; or
3/ I buy the $7 fresh pasta at Whole Foods.

At the moment, I am leaning towards #3.