Making Fresh Pasta
- Sift flour
- Add water to make a soft dough.
- Mix together on a floured board.
- If you stick your finger in the dough, it should be soft and stay down, indented.
- Use pieces of bamboo reeds to roll little pieces of dough into spaghetti on the board.
Boiling Pasta
- Use a big pot. You want fill a big, deep pot 3/4 full of water so that the pasta can move freely as it boils.
- Use the right utensil, a large slotted spoon with forked ends, to separate the strands. Or try a large fork. Stirring with a spoon can make the pasta clump together.
- Heat the water to boiling before you add the pasta
- Just after it starts to boil, add salt. Two tbsp. for a 900 gram package of pasta being cooked in your largest pot--adjust according to the amount you make.
- Norm says his mom always added olive oil (1-2 tbsp) to the cooking water. It isn't necessary unless you're cooking freshly made noodles, or making large-sized pasta like lasagna noodles.
- Turn the heat up if necessary to return the water to a full boil after adding pasta.
- Add the pasta --don't break it. I do break spaghetti in half if I need to save time and want to make a smaller portion in a smaller pot, but Norm says that's not the way to do it.
- Press pasta strands down with the fork so that it's all submerged and stir with a fork to separate.
- After the water's back to a full boil, reduce heat so that the water is still boiling but not boiling over.
- Cook until the pasta is firm but not chewy. Cook it about 2 minutes less than the package instructs, then transfer from the boiling water into the sauce using a long-handled mesh strainer. Keep the cooking water.
- Once the pasta is in the pan with the sauce, add enough pasta-cooking water to make the sauce flowing, not sticky or soupy. Saute the pasta in the pan with the sauce for a few minutes so the pasta will absorb the flavours and the sauce will intensify.
- Sprinkle freshly grated parmesan cheese on top. Try dried hot chili pepper flakes too.
