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 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, and hope Norm doesn't see me 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.
- Fresh flour-and-water pasta doesn't need tomato sauce. Try sautéing garlic and a vegetable (broccoli, cauliflower, rapini, green onion or Swiss chard) in olive oil then tossing with the pasta.
- If you do use a tomato-based sauce, heat it, return the drained pasta to the pot and add the warm sauce. Then add enough of the reserved, pasta cooking water to make the sauce flowy, not sticky or soupy. Let the pasta sit in the pot 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 before serving. Try dried hot chili pepper flakes too.
