Houston we have ravioli!! This is an entire batch of dough and I doubled the filling recipe to have extra on hand...I used almost all of it. I think 3 are gonna make a meal. I rolled the dough out to #5 out of #6, since the machine instructions said "Thinnest for cheese ravioli, next-thinnest for meat ravioli. As mentioned before, I rolled a sheet/filled a sheet. I followed a process where you laid out a sheet of dough, put the filling slightly off-center, then folded the top lengthwise side over top of the filling. You can't really see that there are 3 sides that are cut with the pasta roller, and the tops are where the dough was folded in half. Tonight's filling is that Italian sausage + spinach + ricotta I mentioned. Next time I'll put down 2 rows of filling in smaller portions, then lay a sheet on top of it...that will make smaller ravioli. But it's all gonna eat. And this will do for my first completed effort. Water's on the boil. I'm not sure how long to boil these...others have raised the same "Is it 2 minutes or 15 minutes?" question, since recipes are all over the place. I'll nibble some corners. I also made a fresh batch of marinara. Should be good.
Just ate dinner. THIS is what I bought a pasta machine for!!!! Oh Emm Gee!!!! Exactly what I had a taste for when I stared this journey!!!! That Caputo 00 really, really makes a good pasta. And the marinara sauce recipe I found is exactly right for this. I'm such a happy little piggy.
I just snagged an Angel Hair Pasta attachment for my machine on EBay. $45 on Amazon, got it for $22 including freight. I found a recipe for canned tuna with angel hair pasta and cannellini beans. I figured it should be pretty good with homemade pasta and fresh blackened tuna steaks. That should do it for me as far as accessories are concerned. My machine came with a duplex attachment: spaghetti (tagliolini) and fettuccine. If I need wider ribbon noodles, I can cut them by hand...although the attachments to cut wider noodles are way less expensive than those that cut smaller sized/higher #noodles.
I lied about accessories. I just received my Angel Hair attachment, as well as a Lasagnette attachment. Here's what's available for the machine, along with their approximate size (the size definitions seems to vary). The ones I have are highlighted. The Taglionini and the Fettuccine attachments came with the machine as a duplex. (The types of pasta the included duplex attachments make seems to vary.) I'll keep my eye open for a Taglietelle attachment on sale so as to have a smaller ribbon pasta capability. THAT should do it. In the meantime, I'm gonna make a small batch of Cappeli d'angelo for the Mediterranean Tuna Capellini recipe I found. My next purchase will be a [cheap] grooved board so I can make some 100% semolina-based shaped pastas. I love new cooking toys. I really want a bigger kitchen.
I'm still wading through the different pasta definitions. I now believe that Tagliolini and Spaghetti are two different things. My machine came with Taglioni and Fettuccine, and says that Spaghetti attachments are available. I can't find Spaghetti attachments on line or referenced in any of the Imperia Pasta Machine vids that seem to list every available attachment.. The Taglioni I've made looks just like Spaghetti to me. Again, standards are as weak as my Italian. Here's a pic of regular dough I made tonight just to clean my new attachments, and an egg yolk one for dinner: Gotta love country chickens. Here's my first shot at Angel Hair pasta: I cut the recipe into 1/3 thinking that would be enough, and I should have done the whole thing. I'll stretch it with more cannellini beans. It all eats.
No, that's a 1959 Austin Healey Sprite Mark 1 (aka Bugeye Sprite in the4 states, Frogeye in the UK.) Mark 1 made between 1958 and 1961. Subsequent Sprites (Mark 2, Mark 3) looked like MG Midgets with varying improvements. Bought it in 1973. I was 19. Came with a factory hardtop. Lots of miles and lots of stories (and memories) driving that car. My ex had a 1961 Sprite. Here's an idea as to its size: I recall pulling up to a stop light and seeing a dime on the street. Without opening the door or undoing my seat belt (can you say "placebo"?) I just leaned over and picked it up. Corner of Maple Avenue and Park Street in Vienna, as a matter of fact.
My sister had a Spider in the late 60s, and my ex had a Fiat Sport Coupe. Pieces of poop, as I recall. Triumph also made the TR3 around the same time the Bugeyes were in production. Sort of similar cars: Yeh, they were fun times. Makes me nostalgic. But I don't know if I can scrape together enough denial to get on the road in one of these again.
So I made some more pasta. This is my mode when learning something new. I gotta go at it again and again and again, ironing out the wrinkles (like how to stack sheets of pasta so they don't stick) while the most recent experience is still fresh in my mind. (You should have seen me when I learned to make pizza.) It's good to know that I still can scrape together the motivation to do this. Cavatelli (left) and Orecchiette (right) These are the "shape pastas" (as opposed to "noodle" or "stuffed") made out of semolina flour and water. This is from southern Italy. Because there is no egg, they are supposed to have a long shelf life. Cavatelli ("little cavity"?) are the ones drug across that gnocchi board using your index finger. Done right, they are thin and curl back on themselves, making a hollow trough (easy enough, if you've been doing it ever since you were a little Italian girl.) Orecchiette (which translates to "little ear") are little pieces of dough drug across the countertop with the edge of a knife. Depending on how big a piece of dough you cut off, you can make little ears, medium ears or big ears. (I couldn't stop thinking of van Gogh for some reason.) These are both going to require practice. I'll decide if they're worth it after I taste them, but this is certainly easier than making ravioli...no pasta machine is involved. Those went right from the jelly roll pan into the dehydrator for a few hours. I read that the egg-based pasta can also have a months-long shelf life if dehydrated to remove all the liquid. Opinions are all over the place, but this came from a Federal website (USDA?) Mushroom and Spinach Ravioli I wanted ravioli that could double as a side dish, so I made these. Mushroom + spinach + cream cheese, parm and mozzarella (and herbs.) Gonna make a butter/chive sauce for it. I used the large round ravioli cutter. Not sure I like it. It's tough to get a clean cut, and the pasta comes out of the machine too narrow to get 2 of these side-by-side (same applies to the large square cutter), so there's some waste. There's no way to adjust the width of the sheets to make them narrower. Unless I'm entertaining, I'll likely not use the large cutters again. Cheese Ravioli I used the smaller circle cutter on these. The waste out of a sheet of pasta was way less than from the large circle cutter, although there still was some. I see why the restaurants on the vids I've watched just put the filling down the middle of a sheet, fold it over onto itself, and use a wheel to cut out individual ravioli. There is zero waste (I did it this way with my first batch of sausage ravioli.) Because this is an all cheese ravioli, I was able to use the thinnest setting on the machine. (Meats and other chunky stuff would poke through at this setting.) Man, it's thin! Sort of like phyllo dough. The filling on this is ricotta + mozzarella + parm + fresh basil/parsley/oregano. Good for main dish or side dish. The cookie press is ideal for this work! Easy to control, could get out just the right amount exactly where I wanted it. It has an adjustment for Thin/Medium/Thick cookies, meaning the volume-per-squeeze of the handle is adjustable. Put it on Thick and use the eclair fitting for large ravioli and for stuffing shells, put it on Thin and use the icing fitting for small ravioli and tortellini. Gotta go by my egg guy tomorrow. Each ravioli pasta recipe takes 5 eggs (5 yolks and 4 whites for elasticity.) When I made the angel hair pasta, it was only 1/3 of the noodle dough recipe, and it, too, took 5 eggs (all yolks.) The recipes I've used so far are by weight, not volume or quantity. Makes it a pain to weigh out the separated eggs exactly (although it's interesting trying to pick the right size eggs) but it's easy to assemble, because I don't worry about adding the right amount of flour for the variable in liquid volume or humidity...I just dump it all in and let the stand mixer do the work. Next on my list is Asparagus Ravioli, with ricotta, lemon juice & zest, basil and pistachios. This one has a butter sauce with chives, thyme, broth and white wine. Something about lemon-flavored ricotta that sounds so good...
Just another point on this, since making pasta seems to have turned into my personal journal thread... The filling in the ravioli made with the thinnest possible pasta seeps through the dough. I finish stuffing them about 2PM yesterday and laid them out on a towel, flipping them every couple of hours. The tops always felt dry, and the bottoms were always damp every time I flipped them...in other words, the once-dry tops were always damp when turned over for a couple of hours, and they always dried out again when flipped back. At midnight or so, I put the ravioli in a plastic bag and then in the fridge so they would not sit out all night. This afternoon they were stuck together. I gently pulled them apart and put them in the dehydrator for 45 minutes or so, then on a cookie sheet and into the freezer. I've made two other ravioli with pasta done on the next-to-the-thinnest-setting (Italian sausage stuffed and mushroom/spinach stuffed), and they both dried out fine on the towel being flipped every half hour or so. It seems that the thinnest-setting pasta is almost porous. In any event, it seems that immediately putting these into a dehydrator is a good idea to help finish them properly, unless you live in a dry climate and have a drying screen...or unless you intend to immediately cook them.
I was only familiar with a few. In the past few weeks our Chef has been preparing lunches and dinners with pastas that I have never heard of or consumed. Today I see on the menu that Bucatini with a Olive Caper Sauce, Garlic Capers, Tomato,Kalamanta Olives Basil and Fresh Mozzerella is available as a luncheon choice. I think I will try it.
I have never made pasta (Bobby probably has though ? ); but I was looking at this one advertised on Facebook this morning, and it looks simple enough for even someone like me (not a Foodie person at all) to be able to use. I like that you can just add the veggies right into the machine and have healthier pasta, and the $29 price tag is cheaper than I thought they would be. https://protazz.com/products/electrical-automatic-pasta-maker-machine
That's pretty inexpensive. The whole machine (technically "extruder") with all those noodle options is about the same cost as one noodle attachment for the standard machines...plus it makes your pasta dough. And as I've said, if I did not have a stand mixer, I would not be making pasta (or bread.) I'm not that kneady! At that price, even if you eventually get tired of making pasta, you're not out a whole bunch of money. Of course, a like-kind Phillips model is over $180, so you kinda wonder about quality. I can't find those guys or that brand (Protect Azz) on a web search. And every rating gets 5 stars, even the guy who says "Why are you showing pics of the Phillips machines in your reviews?"