Pathetic Pasta Problems

We ran out of places to dry our pasta. Yes, that's a chair.

So for a brief moment last week our kitchen looked remarkably like a 54 year old British prank.

Sioux and I tried our hands at pasta making, and this time we were given the unique opportunity to learn from our mistakes.

The recipe we choose to use--it was on the back of the sack of flour--involved 2 cups of water, 2 eggs, a pinch of salt, and "enough" warm water. No recipe should ever call for "enough" of anything.


The pasta turned out more than a bit bland. It cooked up well enough, but tasted rather flat. . . I think next time I'll use 3 eggs, and up to 1/4 tsp of salt.

Sioux prepping raviolis.

We used Sioux's pasta machine, and turned out a bunch of spaghetti, a little bit of linguini, and some ravioli. We uncovered a couple of interesting lessons here as well:

First, over fill the ravioli. They fill with steam and float otherwise. They still cooked fine, but it's weird.

Second, you need more flavor in them than you think. Pasta sauce has a pretty specific and fairly powerful flavor that you need to overcome, so concentrate those flavors and pack those pouches full.

To wrap this up: not everything goes well right out of the gate. For this round I'm admitting defeat, but I'm picking up our farm share later today and I'll see if there is anything in there that would make a good pasta filling. If there is I think we'll give pasta another go. . . Possibly this weekend.

The wine helps to make this fit in here.

I'm looking forward to trying the raviolis again, and Sioux is hankering to make more linguini. If you are trying pasta for the first time, I'd suggest steering clear of angel hair spaghetti, it's tough to separate out for drying.

I suppose I'll also have to figure out some way of making this stuff "bad" for you ... You know to make it a "Real" vice.

At least this isn't another post about some type of sausage...