Homemade Fettuccine

I love noodles. I crave noodles. I want noodles for every meal.

But then I would have to buy all new pants as none of mine would fit me anymore if I ate noodles everyday. Still, I would say that I do make some type of pasta dish once a week. I just can't help myself!

The other night, I decided to finally use my pasta attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer. I received both the mixer and the attachment for Christmas presents this past year, and while I have been using my mixer, I have felt a little nervous about the pasta attachment. It just looks like a huge, time consuming project, one of which I have never found just the right time to tackle. I love to watch Iron Chef on Food Network, and they always make homemade pasta with their pasta attachments. They make it look so easy, so I thought, if they can do it, I can do it... right? :)

I found a pasta recipe in the recipe Bible, otherwise know as the "Betty Crocker". Seriously, for as many food magazine recipes, cookbook recipes, and online recipes that I read, time and time again I will resort back to my Betty Crocker for just the right recipe. It is the fount of all wisdom in the recipe world.... although I'm sure that Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking would give it a good run for it's money. But, I don't have that cookbook (do the French even eat pasta? Maybe I need an Italian cookbook!) so I resorted to my Tried and True B.C.

I could not believe how easy this recipe was for pasta. In summary, here is what you do:

1. Get out Kitchen Aid Mixer

2. Dump 2 cups flour, 2 beaten eggs, 1 tsp salt, 1/3 cup water, 1 TB oil, into the Mixer (I also added fresh basil)

3. Mix with the dough hook attachment for about 3 minutes

4. Remove dough, form into a ball, roll it out a little, then feed it thorough the pasta attachment

That's it! I'm not joking! You barely even have to roll out the dough as the pasta attachment does that for you! After you have put the flattened dough through the attachment 3 or 4 times, it is now about 3 feet long and very thin. At this point, you switch the flattening attachment to a cutting attachment. I decided to make fettuccine, so I put it on the fettuccine setting, and fed the flattened pasta through it. Here are some pictures of the dough flattening/noodle cutting process:

Seriously, the noodles end up being 3 feet long. I cut them in half, and then immediately threw them into a large pot of salted, boiling water:

I had to work in batches as there were so dang many of them. But the cooking time is only 2 minutes! TWO MINUTES! Seriously, could this be any easier? Why was I so afraid all this time?

See how chewy those look! MMMM! That is my favorite thing about noodles... I love chewiness. As you can see, the noodles look kind of stuck together, but when you pour them into a colander to drain, you can just add olive oil and they all magically fall apart from each other.

Now that the hard part (ha-right!) was done, I realized I needed something to go with the basil fettuccine. I had a large, just picked, home grown tomato (the best thing ever! in addition to noodles, of course) so I chopped it up, threw it in a pan with olive oil and garlic, and let it simmer for a couple minutes. I added a few generous splashes of red wine, some salt and pepper, and after about 5 minutes of letting that cook together, I added back in the noodles.

I also had some ground lamb from my CSA, so I quickly cooked that up with some garlic, and then added it to the pan with the noodles and wine-soaked tomatoes:

I added some fresh basil, grated Parmesan, and cracked pepper:

This picture does not do any justice for how delicious this actually tasted. This dish is definitely going to become one of my standard "go-to" weeknight meals. Totally delicious, and so easy, it is just fabulous! I'm telling you, if you don't have a pasta attachment for your Kitchen Aid, RUN, don't walk, to your nearest Bed Bath and Beyond and buy one. You won't regret it. We can then trade many noodle recipes and also trade pants as we will all need to go up a size from all this pasta. But some things are just worth it :-)