nothing beats home made

Ok, have you ever had homemade pasta? It's not the same thing as the dried stuff--which I love. And it's really not like the fresh stuff you can buy in the refrigerated section of your grocery store, either, though that's a little closer. And it's actually really simple to make ... I wonder why I don't do it more often. I think I've talked about it before on this blog, but I have to talk about it again just because my dinner was divine tonight. We made papardelle and Bolognese sauce, and I wanted to cry. I am already feeling impatient and want to eat my leftovers that I'm saving for lunch tomorrow. So I recommend trying it sometime. The simplest way to make fresh pasta dough is with a food processor. If you don't have one, you can totally make it by hand the traditional way, but I'm lazy so I leave it to my machines to do the dirty work for me. Good luck!

p.s. We don't own one of those fancy pasta hanger things, so I just super cleaned off a plastic clothes hanger and hung the pasta on that, and it worked out really well

Fresh Pasta Dough
makes about 1 lb
2 C all-purpose flour
3 large eggs, beaten
water

1. Pulse the flour in the food processor bowl a few times to aerate.
2. Add the eggs, and process until combined. The dough should form a rough ball.
3. If it looks like teeny pebbles, add 1 teaspoon at a time of water until it forms a rough ball shape. If it's sticking to the side, add flour, 1 T at a time until it looks right.
4. Pull it out of the food processor bowl and knead together until the dough is smooth, about 2 minutes. Cover tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes, up to 2 hours.
   

When you're ready to use it, pull out your handy dandy pasta machine and roll it out as you wish:) If you don't have a pasta machine, just make sure you flour it really well and roll it out as thin as possible. It'll be a lot more work, though, so someday think about getting a pasta machine.