My restraint in using the pasta maker lasted until about 2pm yesterday afternoon, when I decided that we were having bolognese for dinner. I got a pan of sauce on the go (garlic, onions, carrots, courgettes, beef mince, tinned toms, foraged wild marjoram, low salt stock cubes and a splash of balsamic vinegar), and set about making my pasta dough. I made the happy discovery that the maker comes with a penne die already attached, but I still stuck with my original plan of pappardelle (extra wide tagliatelle).
It took me a few goes to figure out the right speed to get the stuff into the mixer, and my first attempts weren't exactly michelin star style:
However, within a few minutes I was cranking out pasta like a pro:
The bolognese was nicely reduced and scrummy after 2 hours gentle bubbling, so I plopped the fresh pasta into boiling water for a couple of minutes, and served up (with a scraping of organic parmesan over the top, naturally). Oh My God. It was the best pasta I have evertasted. Ever. We ate 1/4 of the pasta each, which, for the record, is an enormous portion and far more than we needed. But it was so goooooood. Slightly meaty in textue (if you know what I mean) and yummy and scrummy, I suddenly understood why Italians say that pasta is delicious with a drizzle of garlic or truffle oil.
Incidentally, the recipe was not exactly complex:
500g type 00 flour
4 eggs
Mix in the Kenwood (I suppose if you committed the sacrilege of owning a different mixer it would also suffice) until mix resembles breadcrumbs, but can be pushed together to make a dough. Job done. The most difficult bit was working out how quickly to drop it into the maker.
Oh, I suppose we'd better get on to the money bit. Which is, after all, the point of the exercise (although delicious pasta is a pretty good point all on its own). I made pasta with 500g of flour and four eggs, which is enough for four servings (probably more like 5-6 servings if we ever manage to eat slightly less of the stuff in one sitting) plus enough extra for Teddy.
Half a dozen organic/semi organic (i.e. from a tiny local producer who doesn't feed their chickens crap, but doesn't get organically certified food) eggs from the farm shop is anything from £1-1.75, so assuming four cost about £1 and 500g organic flour was about 50p, we're talking a total of £1.50 for around 750g of pasta, or £2 per kg. Fresh, organic linguine from Ocado (i.e. Waitrose) is £4.36 per kg, and the organic dried tagliatelle is £4.18 per kg. I know that's the more expensive end of the scale (bog standard organic dried spaghetti is only £1.96 per kg), but I've managed to make organic pasta that is far nicer than even the fresh organic stuff from Waitrose, for half the price. Even if you add on a few pence per kilo for the energy used by the pasta maker, it's still plenty cheaper. It's even still cheaper if I add an imaginary £1 per batch for the cost of the pasta maker, which would mean that the pasta maker will be paid off in 3-4 of years (assuming a batch every 1-2 weeks).
Once the maker is 'paid off', and if we get chickens (free eggs!), we'll be making fabulous pasta for under £1 per kg including energy usage, which is rather impressive, if I do say so myself.
Finally, and most importantly, Teddy approves:
It took me a few goes to figure out the right speed to get the stuff into the mixer, and my first attempts weren't exactly michelin star style:
(Actually, those are my second attempt. I was too embarrassed to even photograph the ragged 1/2 inch strips that made up my first attempt.
However, within a few minutes I was cranking out pasta like a pro:
Although we were planning on eating half of it straight away, I wanted to freeze some, so I hung it out to air dry for a bit:
then twisted it into roughly half portion nests, just like a professional.
The bolognese was nicely reduced and scrummy after 2 hours gentle bubbling, so I plopped the fresh pasta into boiling water for a couple of minutes, and served up (with a scraping of organic parmesan over the top, naturally). Oh My God. It was the best pasta I have evertasted. Ever. We ate 1/4 of the pasta each, which, for the record, is an enormous portion and far more than we needed. But it was so goooooood. Slightly meaty in textue (if you know what I mean) and yummy and scrummy, I suddenly understood why Italians say that pasta is delicious with a drizzle of garlic or truffle oil.
Incidentally, the recipe was not exactly complex:
500g type 00 flour
4 eggs
Mix in the Kenwood (I suppose if you committed the sacrilege of owning a different mixer it would also suffice) until mix resembles breadcrumbs, but can be pushed together to make a dough. Job done. The most difficult bit was working out how quickly to drop it into the maker.
Oh, I suppose we'd better get on to the money bit. Which is, after all, the point of the exercise (although delicious pasta is a pretty good point all on its own). I made pasta with 500g of flour and four eggs, which is enough for four servings (probably more like 5-6 servings if we ever manage to eat slightly less of the stuff in one sitting) plus enough extra for Teddy.
Half a dozen organic/semi organic (i.e. from a tiny local producer who doesn't feed their chickens crap, but doesn't get organically certified food) eggs from the farm shop is anything from £1-1.75, so assuming four cost about £1 and 500g organic flour was about 50p, we're talking a total of £1.50 for around 750g of pasta, or £2 per kg. Fresh, organic linguine from Ocado (i.e. Waitrose) is £4.36 per kg, and the organic dried tagliatelle is £4.18 per kg. I know that's the more expensive end of the scale (bog standard organic dried spaghetti is only £1.96 per kg), but I've managed to make organic pasta that is far nicer than even the fresh organic stuff from Waitrose, for half the price. Even if you add on a few pence per kilo for the energy used by the pasta maker, it's still plenty cheaper. It's even still cheaper if I add an imaginary £1 per batch for the cost of the pasta maker, which would mean that the pasta maker will be paid off in 3-4 of years (assuming a batch every 1-2 weeks).
Once the maker is 'paid off', and if we get chickens (free eggs!), we'll be making fabulous pasta for under £1 per kg including energy usage, which is rather impressive, if I do say so myself.
Finally, and most importantly, Teddy approves:
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