https://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/homemade-tagliatelle-pesto • Posted by Tom
This was our first attempt at pasta, and it worked really well. It's (surprisingly) a *lot* tastier than store-bought dried pasta. Rolling the pasta is a little bit of work, but it's fun and easy to pick up. We found our pasta flour in a large supermarket. Your pasta will end up much much longer than store-bought, so be prepared for some Lady-And-The-Tramp moments if you share!
This was our first attempt at pasta, and it worked really well. It's (surprisingly) a *lot* tastier than store-bought dried pasta. Rolling the pasta is a little bit of work, but it's fun and easy to pick up. We found our pasta flour in a large supermarket. Your pasta will end up much much longer than store-bought, so be prepared for some Lady-And-The-Tramp moments if you share!
Put the flour in a bowl. Make a well, and crack the eggs into the center.
Mix with a fork. Bit by bit, the flour will combine with the eggs. Keep going until you're left with a ball of dough.
Knead the dough. It'll start dough-ey and end up really smooth and pasta-ey! Keep adding flour if it gets too sticky.
Once it's smooth, cut into 3...
then cover with cling film, and leave to stand for at least 30 minutes.
Rolling time! We used a pasta machine with 9 settings - 1 was the thickest, and 9 the thinnest. Start with one of your dough balls, and run it through at the thickest setting a few times. It'll come out with a rough texture. Each time, dust with a little flour, and fold back into a thick parcel, and then run through the machine again. This will change your dough again - it'll get even smoother. Then, start increasing the setting on your machine - we added 2 notches each time. Again, add a little flour, but don't fold. The dough will get really long! Don't worry about the shape now though - we'll get it even later.
Once you've worked up through 1,3,5,7 and 9, you should be left with a *really* long sheet of pasta. Now, keep folding the sheet up into a square parcel. Rotate the square 90 degrees, set the machine to the widest setting, and do the whole thing again. This time, increase just 1 setting on the pasta machine each time. The pasta should come out the full width of the machine. It'll be slightly shorter, but it'll be a nice full-width sheet of pasta. It'll take a little while to work through each and every setting, but it's worth it!
The fun part! Our machine has a cutting attachment too - for linguine and tagliatelle. We used the tagliatelle one, put the pasta sheet through and... tagliatelle came out!
Make sure you don't have lumps, or uncut strips. Then, put the pasta to the side. It only takes a 2-3 minutes to cook in a large pan of boiling water. When it floats, it's done.
To make the pesto, chop up the sun dried tomatoes, basil and walnuts and grind together with a mortar and pestle. You can use a blender too if you want to do it faster.
Add the parmesan and olive oil and mix together.
Cook the pasta for a couple of minutes in boiling water until it floats and serve hot with your pesto and a sprinkling of herbs. Share with a friend you'd like to impress with your new culinary skills. Tell them you learned from Ritagliare E Conservare... or Cut Out + Keep if they don't speak Italian...