I only realised that it has been 2 months since our last My Little Chef post this week! Not that we haven't been doing any cooking or baking but more that we have had a lot of meals that we have already featured.
However, this year we started a new food topic, pasta. We have tried different types of pasta with Bolognese but we had to get to grips with making our own! With that in mind we finally had a chance to make it!
Ingredients
140g Plain Flour
2 Medium Eggs
Flour for dusting
Resources
Scales
Mixing bowl
Whisk
Clingfilm
Pasta machine (Not essential)
Method
William started by measuring our 140g of plain flour. He then placed the flour into a large mixing bowl.
He then broke one whole egg and placed it in with the flour. William then only needed just the yolk of second egg so carefully cracked the shell in half and separated the yolk from the white.
He then placed the yolk in the bowl with the flour and whole egg.
Using an electric whisk William blended the contents of the bowl together.
The mixture should form very slightly wet breadcrumbs as seen below.
If the mixture is to dry then add and mix the remains of the split egg and whisk again.
Using his hand William created a dough ball with the contents of the bowl.
William then dusted the side and kneaded the dough. Once he had done this he wrapped it in clingfilm and placed it in the fridge for an hour.
Once the dough had finished chilling William set up the pasta maker and dusted the top rollers.
Alternatively, you could use and dust a rolling pin.
Squeezing with a pinching motion one end of the dough ball the boys worked together to feed it into the pasta maker. Whilst turning the handle and rolling the dough through the machine.
This process was repeated several times to make the past thin. Each time the boys repeated this process they changed the thickness level of the rollers to change the thickness and within the making the dough become a long thin sheet.
On every turn through the machine they sprinkled a little flour and lightly dusted the surface of the sheet.
After adding the cutting section to the machine the boys carefully fed the thin rolled out sheet back into the machine. In this example the boys made tagliatelle strips but these could easily be cut without the machine using a rule and a knife.
The boys found it easier to have one person feeding the sheet and turning the handle and one holding the cut strips. We found that the strips would just ripple onto each other and stick.
With the work surface dusted with flour again the strips of pasta were placed and carefully separated.
Fresh pasta takes between 3 - 4 minutes to cook in hot water so you have to make sure that you don't over cook it.
It was a tad confusing the first time that we tried this but actually each step is quite straightforward that I am sure it will take us less time for future meals.
I would also suggest that it is possible to make large amounts of the dough that can stay in the fridge for the week so you only need to take it out and roll and cut each time. Both the boys and I instantly tasted the difference between fresh and dried pasta and it is something that we are now going to regularly make.
What do you think? Would you give this a try?
Do you make your own pasta? Do you have any tips?
No comments:
Post a Comment