Oh Glorious Pasta!

Who doesn't love a plate of flavorful pasta on a cold day? How about homemade pasta? This week was my first attempt, and it was amazing! I decided to go all out and I got a ravioli press to go with the pasta attachments on my Kitchen Aid mixer. I scoured the internet for recipes, found an interesting filling recipe and a basic Italian pasta recipe with semolina flour, and got started. What fun!

It took me a little time to get the consistency and thickness right on the dough so that it would feed through the pasta attachment. For those inexperienced with pasta dough, it is quite dry, and with semolina flour it's a bit harder to roll out. And you do have to roll it out some before feeding it through the attachment because it won't go through otherwise. The good news is that the dough doesn't have to be very thin - just enough to feed through. Once you get the hang of it, it's a snap!

The recipe for the filling was the easiest part. Wilt some spinach in olive oil, squeeze out the water after it cools, throw it in the food processor with the feta cheese and pine nuts, and you're done! The one thing I will say is that I used about half the amount of spinach called for in the recipe. For my palette, it was perfectly spinachy that way without going over the top. Here's the filling recipe.

The ravioli press was a blast! You take one layer of pasta dough, squish it down with the filling press so that it makes nice holes for the filling, spoon in the filling, and cover with another layer of dough. Then you roll over the press and cut the sides with a little ravioli cutter that looks like a mini pizza cutter with crimped edges. This is what you get:

Aren't they cute? Better still, they were amazingly delicious!!

I also made homemade sauce, which is easier than you'd think, thanks to the family recipe of my college friend Kathy Farretta. I can't divulge that one without permission (sorry) but here's a simple one that is close: marinara sauce. Hint: changes to make include leaving out the carrot, adding green pepper, and not using sugar.

Here's the final result. Scrumptious!