Saturday, January 14, 2012

Noodle Making

My parents have a hand crank pasta machine that hasn't been out of the basement for years.
Late in December, the Mister and I combined the snails Santa left in Mister Splashy Pants' stocking with a fresh Oregon black truffle to create a special "present" dish for M+D . Along with the mushrooms, shallots, wine and cream, and accompaniments of crusty bread, creamed spinach and braised fennel, I thought the dish needed homemade pasta.
With mom watching and actively thinking I was crazy, I noted how they can make pasta (with time to plate) in 30 minutes on "The Next Iron Chef", pulled out Mom's Marcella Hazan*, and made some pasta. Dad helped me crank it out. Mom took these photos**.


It was great. The escargot and truffles may have been better on angel hair rather than the fettuccine, but overall it was great.
So great that my parents pulled out the noodle machine last night and the Mister and I are talking of buying one (someday***). So great that I wondered how a whole noodle year passed without me making these noodles and so great that I came home and made ravioli a week later. So great that I think you should try and see the magic that can happen with eggs and flour and a little time. Let me know how it works.

*The Classic Italian Cookbook.
**The Mister took some on our camera as well. It just seems that M+D are better organized (and have flashier phones) than we are.
***But if you see one at a garage sale or have one from a wedding gift you never use, we'll take it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It really was a great dish. And much less time consuming than one would think.
Dick tried to duplicate Lisa's dish last night and his was "almost" as good.
Mom

Marieke said...

Wow! Makes me hungry.

Debbie said...

My world view on noodle making = time consuming changed since my Chinese housemate makes homemade noodles all the time. Just rolls out the dough and chops it up into noodles. I've never seen her use bagged noodles. She makes dumplings all the time too - more time consuming chopping up the filling. And she shares with me!