mary.codes

I've had the crazy expensive KitchenAid pasta roller and cutter set on my Amazon wishlist for a few years now, and this year I actually got them for Christmas! I couldn't wait to try making some fresh, homemade pasta.

I used the recipe out of the pasta roller's instruction manual, which is just a plain egg noodle made with flour, egg, water, and salt. However, I could tell that it would create much more pasta than I needed.

One of my latest kitchen hacks is to use ChatGPT to help me modify recipes and translate them into grams, so I can use my kitchen scale for measurements.

So far, ChatGPT has yet to steer me wrong on my recipe conversions. However, just halving the recipe still created more pasta than I needed for last night's dinner.

These are the measurements that I will use in the future, to try to make just two servings of pasta:

Ingredients

• 1 large egg
• 114g all-purpose flour
• 4g water
• 1.25g salt

I tried using the mixer part of my stand mixer to create the dough, but it was such a small amount that it didn't want to form a cohesive ball, and I ended up gathering it together and kneading it by hand. Next time, I think I'll use the pile of flour and egg technique, where you add the egg to the flour and use a fork to incorporate the ingredients.

One problem that I had was that I wasn't continually dusting the dough with flour, so sometimes it was sticking to the rollers or itself. In the future, I'll make sure to dust each piece with flour during the rolling process, and before the cutting process. Because of the sticking problem, I had to re-roll and re-cut two of my "pasta nests", because they formed into a solid ball as they sat.

The flour dusting makes a real difference, as you can see here. Each noodle is defined and not sticking to the others. There might be some slight sticking, but they'll separate in the water.

I flattened each piece of dough to level 4, which makes a chunkier, rustic fettucine noodle. If I wanted them to be a little fancier, I'd go down to a 5. I generally rolled each piece of dough twice on level 1, twice on 2, and then once each on 3 and 4. Once all the sheets were rolled out, I switched to the cutter attachment.

I had a pot of boiling water at the ready, but I ended up with so many noodles that the pot was crowded. Because of the crowding and subsequent lack of boiling, I cooked the noodles for about five minutes before removing them with a pasta spoon and transferring to a pan of sauce. The extra pasta water helped the sauce get creamy and stick to the noodles. I prefer to use the pasta spoon instead of draining the pasta for that reason. Otherwise, reserve a little bit of the pasta water before draining and add it to the sauce.

I do have to admit some shame, though. I used jarred alfredo and pesto sauces on my fresh pasta! I need to start gathering some recipes for fresh-made pasta sauces now!

Even with the jarred sauce, the pasta came out so delicious, I'm not sure if I'll ever go back to using dried, packaged pasta. Now I need the fancy pasta extruder attachment so I can make fresh macaroni and cheese!