Homemade Pasta with Zucchini in an Herb Sauce


Thanks for the 300+ views over the last six months! This blog has been really fun to work on and I'm constantly searching for new recipes to try, hopefully every month I'll be able to increase my posting at least a little more than the month before.

Now on to the homemade pasta...


Ingredients:
-Flour
-Eggs
-Water

The pasta recipe is a family recipe of my roommate's. According to Becky you add all ingredients in equal parts one egg per cup of flour and a proportional amount of water. We made a lot of pasta (she said you can freeze some for later) so we used five eggs and five cups of flour and five measurements of water.


Add the flour to the bowl first and make a crater in the center.

Add the eggs to the center, reserving one half egg shell (that part is really important)

This step is very important Now add one egg shell full of water per every cup of flour.
We had five cups of flour...so we added five eggshells of water.

Stir first with a spoon.

Then kneed with your hands.

Flour your work surface (you can't add too much flour, you don't want your dough to stick)

Kneed some more.

Return the dough to the bowl, cover and set aside for five-ten minutes.

Remove from bowl and divide into equal sections.
Now you can proceed one of two ways -- if you don't have a pasta maker roll the dough as thin as you can and slice into thin strips with a pizza cutter (fettuccine anyone?) make sure to continue to use flour on the work surface and on the pizza cutter. If you have a pasta maker or a pasta attachment for your stand mixer follow the steps below.


Feed through the machine on the largest setting (ours was one) you eventually want to get to a setting which will be your desired thickness of pasta (ours was the thinnest setting of six).

Set the flattened rolls aside, continue to add flour to prevent sticking.

Repeat the previous two steps, changing the numbered setting on the pasta maker in between, until you achieve the desired thinness. 
Feed through the cutter attachment.
Put aside the pasta onto baking sheets lined with wax paper  (flour is your friend, no one wants to eat stuck together pasta).
Cook as much pasta as you need for your meal in a large pot of salted boiling water.

Meanwhile make some sauce -- you can add any sauce to your pasta marinara, alfredo, etc. We had herbs left over from making fondue last week so we decided to make an oil and herb sauce.

Ingredients:
- Olive Oil
- Butter
- Herbs of any variety (we used rosemary and thyme)
- Garlic

I didn't use specific amounts of any ingredient in this recipe, I pretty much eyeballed it -- I used about 3/4 of a cup of oil, three table spoons of butter, three cloves of garlic and two sprigs of each herb finely chopped.

I sauteed some sliced zucchini in a skillet with the melted butter and garlic.
Once the pasta is finished (it won't take long, not nearly as long as boxed pasta, just a few minutes). Then I removed the skillet with the butter, garlic and zucchini mixture from the heat -- add the pasta and oil/herb mixture and toss.


Homemade pasta is so worth the time and effort! I encourage everyone to try making pasta at least once and to experiment with different sauces. It would also be possible to infuse the herbs into the pasta dough, rather than including it in the sauce. You could also include any variety of vegetables in the dish.

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