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Fresh pasta

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Fresh pasta

Overview
Nothing beats fresh made. Customise this in one of many ways – add some flat fresh herbs between the layers (if doing sheets or rough-cutting in wide strips), use coloured food powders or squid ink, or even food dye to make the kids happy. Add some bolognaise for a hearty meal.

I use a mixer and pasta attachments so there’s no real heavy work in this. If I had Italian heritage, my ancestors would be unimpressed. Good thing I’m Latvian!
This recipe makes enough for 5-6 decent serves of pasta, or about 2 lasagnes.

Time
Preparation can take a little while to get the balance of wet and dry correct, then it must rest for 20 minutes before rolling. It always seems to take me at least 30 minutes longer than I thought it would, although that might be me!

Ingredients
2 ½ – 3 cups of 00 flour
pinch of salt
3 – 4 eggs
Optional extras: herbs (fresh or dried), food powders (eg beetroot) or dye

Equipment
Benchtop mixer with dough hook, pasta roller and optional cutters
Pasta drying rack

Method
1 – Place flour, salt any extras and 3 eggs into the mixer. Mix on low speed with a dough hook.

2 – Once ingredients are as combines as they can get, decide if extra liquid is needed. Add an extra yolk, the small drips of the white until the dough starts to clump. Let it mix for a few minutes, as it will get moister. It shouldn’t look like a ball of dough – this will be too wet.

3 – When the dough can be brought together, wrap in Glad Wrap and allow to rest for at least 20 minutes.

**If cooking pasta for a meal, start the water boiling now.**

4 – Cut dough in thirds, take out one piece. Roll or push it flat enough to start using the pasta roller.

5 – Run through the pasta roller on the thickest setting, folding over each time. Once it is smooth, continue rolling on thinner and thinner settings without folding. On the Kenwood Chef, I start at setting 1 and go through to 6 for linguine and lasagne or 7 for finer spaghetti.

6 – Hang lasagne sheets on rack lightly coated with fine semolina. OR
6 – Add the pasta cutter and run sheets carefully through, cutting as needed and hanging on the rack lightly coated with fine semolina.

**If cooking straight away, drop into salted boiling water and cook until al dente. It won’t take long – less than 5 minutes unless it’s a huge batch.**

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