Ryan the Girl: From Scratch

Ah, a holiday weekend with no gigs, no appointments, no traveling, and no obligations! I can think of little better. On Saturday, Chris and I decided to make homemade pasta. And by "homemade," I mean completely from scratch. Our noodles turned out ok (there are some things we'd do differently the next time), but it was really fun and the meal itself was delicious. We made pasta al vongole, which is a simple Italian dish of pasta with clams that were steamed in white wine and garlic. Belissima!

So, first you gather your ingredients and recipes and set up your work space:

Then, put the flour into the bowl. We used half regular, bleached flour and half semolina flour. We think that, next time, we'll try to find this special 00 Italian flour that is ultra-fine:

Then, you form the flour into a little "well" or "nest." Crack a few eggs in there:

Then, you mix the flour and eggs with your hands, making sure not to add too much flour (in Italian cooking, it's not about precise measurements. It's about doing things until "it looks right."):

Then, knead that sucker for ten minutes:

Then, drink wine and knead some more:

Whoa, scary ghosty reflection of the Busch sign!

Aftering kneading for ten minutes, form the dough into a ball and cover it with a bowl for half an hour:

After half an hour, take the dough out from under the bowl. Separate it into four sections. Roll out and stretch one section at a time:

Then, it you don't have a pasta machine (which we don't), you cut the flattened and stretched-out dough into your noodles. You can make them however you please!

Our noodles!

The next step was to prepare the vongoles. We put some olive oil and garlic in a pan, then we added the clams and white wine.

Meanwhile, chop some parsley. Give the leftovers to the bunny.

Meanwhile meanwhile, drink more wine.

Then, cook your homemade pasta. Since it's not dried, it doesn't need to cook for too long.

Pull the clams out of the pan as they open up. We got our seafood from a great local seafood place instead of the regular grocery store. EVERY one of the clams we bought opened (no duds!), which is worth a little extra. We've gotten mussels from Kroger before and had more than half not open (which means you can't eat the little devils).