Who Here Has Made Homemade Pasta?

I thought I had thoroughly dried the semolina-based shapes before I put them in the vacuum container. I went to cook them roughly 8-10 days after making them, and while much of the air had leaked out of the container, it was still under a little vacuum. But the pasta was moldy. Very moldy. I find it odd, since this was just semolina and flour (no eggs), so was supposed to have a long shelf life. I'll make another batch when I can get more baskets for my dehydrator and can really dry out the entire batch (in Italy, they put these on screens and set them out in the sun.) I think part of the problem was my lack of technique, so the shapes may have been too thick to properly dry. I have no frame of reference for proper size. So disappointed. I've yet to taste the semolina pasta.

I've also noticed a bit of an issue with my Imperia machine. When I put it on the thinnest setting (#6), the sheet of pasta pulls to one side. This is a problem because you don't get a uniform sheet...the tail end tends to be a little thicker, and it's narrower in width.

I read that even a 1MM roller space difference from one side to the other can cause this (I read this on a Marcato Atlas machine page.) I just checked mine with feeler gauges. The two sides are out by .7mm on the thinnest setting (.30mm at the crank side vs .23mm at the width adjuster side.) The funny thing is that pasta is being pushed from the thin side to the wider side. I would have thought that the thin side would pull it, not push it. Perhaps there's a different causal issue and the .7mm width variance is not a problem. I've only made the thinnest pasta once. It will be a while before I make another batch of thin ravioli to play with it.

I don't have a feed issue on any of the other 5 settings, nor did I measure them (I'm not that anal.)
Settings #1 thru #3 are just to work your way down to the final settings.
Setting #4 is for spaghetti (the thickest round noodle pasta.)
Setting #5 is for meat-filled ravioli and all the other noodle types. I use this second-thinnest setting almost exclusively.
Setting #6 is solely for ravioli w/cheese filling (the cheese is smooth and won't poke through the thin dough.)

My next thing is going to be forming a spacer out of polymer clay so that I can adjust the width of the machine to best-fit the pasta sheet to the different-sized ravioli punches. The goal is to minimize scrap/waste. More on that when the clay arrives from Amazon.

 

Capers + Kalamata olives + Mozzarella is a great combo.
Kalamata olives are very "meaty," and are flavorful without having an acidic bite to them.

I recently made a cold pasta with tuna and white beans in a dressing of olive oil, lemon juice and parsley. It's quite a nice change from hot pasta with marinara sauce.

 

That looks good. My favorite pastas have ricotta in them. But there is no labor involved with that dough to shape it...just roll & cut. Where's the self-inflicted punishment? Didn't you give me grief over old ladies using forks or something when I bought my grooved board???

It's interesting timing on you posting this. It's gonna rain tomorrow, so I set out the stuff to remind me to make the semolina-based shapes again (Orecchiette, Cavatelli), and put them in the dehydrator this time so they don't get blue & fuzzy.

Let me know how this works out. It looks like such an easy, tasty dish, and I've taken to keeping a tub of ricotta in the fridge.

 

You sound like me.

I have the stuff to make the semolina pasta but I blew it off for a Mexican restaurant last night and burgers tonight. I also need to make a fresh batch of marinara to portion out & freeze, and may add some of those anchovies I bought to it.

 

I don't end up tossing food very often, but when I do, I figure it's built into the savings from cooking at home. My problem is getting on runs where I'm hot & heavy into something, and I'll buy ingredients ahead to make more, then I suddenly lose interest.

It's funny that I burn out on stuff and don't even realize when it's happened. I just move on to something else without any conscious decision to do so. I guess I'm lucky to enjoy such a wide variety of stuff that I have things to move on to without even thinking about it.

 

Peppers are the weak spot I've yet to figure out. I even bought some from the frozen food section to see if commercially frozen were better than me doing it myself. Nope. I've also washed/dried/frozen/vacuum sealed parsley, herbs, minced shallots. It works OK. Better than nothing, I guess.

I've always kept asparagus on hand in canning jars with water in it, just as you would keep flowers. I tent the top with a sandwich bag to keep the fridge fan from making the tops funky. Depending on the initial quality of the asparagus, they keep for a good long while. I've started doing the same thing with parsley and cilantro, tenting them with a plastic shopping bag due to their size (not wanting to scrunch them in a small bag.) They also keep fresh for a very long time (I just checked at some I've had for a couple of weeks, and it's still fresh-looking.)

I'm going to plant some herbs this spring, but it's not as though a single guy is gonna make extensive use of them. It's a matter of occasional convenience. And a plant won't cost any more than buying a small retain pak. I'll try dehydrating some in my Excalibur.

 

That ricotta should be good for a couple of months.

I've been buying fresh herbs since I've been on my pasta kick. I've got a spot picked out right near my kitchen door for an herb garden next spring. I've hesitated to do this because a single guy won't be using all that much, but now I have a dehydrator, I can harvest and save for later. It will certainly be cheaper than we I've paid at the grocery store.

(Speaking of dehydrating, I got my Breville baskets yesterday, so I soaked 3 1/2# of almonds last night and have them dehydrating for 24 hours. Tomorrow I can air fry the entire batch to put a toasty flavor to them, then chocolate coat them.)

 

I've been through the same iteration of having a windowsill herb garden.

Regarding your cilantro: I've kept cilantro and parsley for 2 weeks in jars of water in the fridge, tented with plastic bags. I have Italian parsley in there now that I've had for well over 2 weeks, and I'm still cutting off of it (I just through the cilantro and the curly parsley away.) I've not tried just leaving them out on the windowsill in the water without having to put the bag over them (to protect from the fridge fan.) Maybe I'll buy a couple of bunches of parsley and do a side-by-side comparison. I can't imagine why it would need to be refrigerated.