The Homemade Pasta "UnRecipe"

Although this is a "recipe" for pasta, this is actually an un recipe. I'll give all the directions, but if you go a head and make them for yourselves, you'll see that you really made them without any directions at all. So this is my "un recipe" for the best homemade pasta. Ever. In the world. Yes.

The Homemade Pasta "Un recipe"

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• I cup of flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 2 Tablespoons of water

3 servings

Directions:

Mix together the salt and flour. Make a "well" or hole that doesn't quite reach the bottom of the bowl and crack a large egg into it. You can do this in a bowl, like I did. Or, if you're feeling brave, do like the Italians do and Just heap the mound of flour directly on the counter and add the eggs into that.

Since this supposedly is only 3 servings I went ahead and tripled it. As I was adding in the flour I was disrupted by the littles running around me and lost my train of thought (Oh Lord, this is sad. I only had to count to three, for three cups, and I lost my train of thought. This is a new low for me and slightly disturbing) Anyway, I lost my "train of thought" and could not remember if I had done 2 cups or 3 already and I was in a hurry, and it looked about 3 cups but I added about a half cup extra anyway.

Go ahead and mix that and add the water. The dough should be sticky and firm. This WILL NOT be enough water. I ended up doing about 10 Tablespoons of water and 4 Tablespoons of olive oil. Just add enough water and oil to make a dough you can knead and that looks all doughy and happy.

Knead this for about 4 minutes. I then let mine sit for 15 minutes.

Once that is done you can either roll out the dough with a roller or use a pasta maker. I used my nifty pasta maker that my mom gave me.

I took about 1/8 of the dough, floured it and rolled it through twice before rolling it through the pasta side. I decided to let the kids help. This, of course doubled the time it took to do this, but that's ok. :) After a while of this though E. became bored and wandered off and I set D. off to the side of where I was working. She happily, very happily kneaded her little ball of dough in the flour she kept stealing when I wasn't watching her. :)

Once you have the pasta, let it dry out for a bit before cooking. I let mine sit and become slightly dry, about 20 minutes.

Start a salted pot of water boiling. These noodles take about 8 minutes (depending on how long you let them dry out for.) to cook. It doesn't look like there a ton of noodles, but they are so very filling! All four of us ate our fill, and there was still enough left over for another whole dinner's worth, at least!

The rest of the family had the normal pasta sauce, but I rinsed mine until they were cool and added in just a bit of ranch dressing, a tiny bit of Sun Dried Tomato vinaigrette and a slight squeeze of lemon. It was perfect!

Although this takes longer to make than dumping a box of pasta in a pot, it was worth it! It doesn't even taste like pasta, it taste like long strips of Italian wheat goodness! Try it, you won't be disappointed!

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