After I had completed my outside jobs around the house, I thought it would be good to prepare a stockpile of pasta given one of my goals is to make our own pasta for a year.

A few weeks ago, I made spaghetti, which turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag, some parts good, some bad.  Since that time, I have made ravioli which I will post about soon, and today I made fettuccine.

The recipe was very simple.  250gm of plain flour, 250gm continental flour or semolina, 5 eggs and mix initially with a fork and then your hands until it forms a firm dough.  Then roll through the machine 5 times on number 1 then roll once on every setting until you finally roll out at number 6.  The sheet will be very thin, but easily manageable.

Then cut into about 40cm lengths and run it through your wide cutter to make fettuccine (little slices).

Then dry the pasta out for about an hour.  

As you can see, all I have made a drying rack out of two old broom handles, that I sanded and prepared with olive oil and rested them on two dinning chairs.  Nothing special, just practical.  I also put a towel underneath in case some dropped down during drying.

 A word of advice whilst making pasta.  Ensure that your machine is firmly fastened to the bench or table you are using.  You use quite a bit of force getting the dough through the initial setting.

When the pasta was dry, Kim and I divided the pasta up into quarters and bagged them up and put them in the freezer.  That way will have fettuccine ready for quick meals like Fettuccine Alfredo! 

Here are the bags in the freezer.

I also had a little bit of dough to experiment with, and managed to run a very small sheet through to number 9 on the machine.  I then whizzed it through the smallest cutter I had to see what turned out.  Well, low and behold I made Taglierini (little cut ones) which is a thin form of Tagliatelle.  I let this little nest dry out, then cooked it in a little salted water, drained well and served it in a small bowl with butter and pepper.  It was delicious, and separated well in the pot when cooked.  Kim, Ben and I scoffed down what little there was, so I dare say I know what I am doing tomorrow!