Artichoke Heart

Yesterday during a snowy Brooklyn afternoon, a rather miraculous event occured. My pasta machine, gifted to me  by my parents at least 6 years ago for Christmas, finally made its debut. That’s right, Jim got up on a ladder, delved into our serpentine storage space, and brought that still-encased-in-plastic piece of kitchen machinery down into our culinary reality. 

I had never attempted to make pasta from scratch, ever. And with my affection for the stuff, it seems rather strange upon reflection. But after mixing together a few eggs with some Farina di tipo “O”, it wasn’t too difficult, and this is coming from one of the dough-challenged. With a quick reference to Jamie Oliver’s The Naked Chef, which shows you how to mix and roll the dough out step-by-step, stress was minimal. Except when Jim informed me of my dough-deficient perspective, and took the the mixing of the dough away from me. More water or more flour? Another egg? He figured it out while I went to get the laundry. Maybe that’s why the stress level was low.

We left the dough in the fridge for about an hour, and I started the ragu while we waited. It was Jamie Oliver all the way on Saturday, and I referred to his newest for the meat sauce. I don’t mean to be such an Oliver freak in this post, but I’ve been really inspired by his Italian cookbook lately, with its gorgeous pictures and really fresh, delicious recipes.

Like I said earlier, rolling the sheets out was pretty simple, and left minimal mess–much less than when I have made pizza dough by hand. The only problem was, we made too much, and it was too late to invite anyone over to share it with us. And silly me, instead of freezing the extras, I cooked it all. But we made a valiant effort to finish it, and I’ll know better next time. Stay tuned for ravioli.