"Homemade" Dinner

For tonight's dinner I made quite possibly the most homemade dinner I have ever made. For the first time ever I made my own pasta with a mushroom cream sauce, salad with homemade dressing and homemade italian bread. I was feeling all proud of myself but then I realized that homemade is a pretty relative term. Although I made my own pasta it is not like I grew and ground the wheat for flour. I didn't press my own olives or make the cheese in the salad. Basically my idea of "homemade" falls in-between Sandra Lee's version and that of a frontier woman. But, still, the dinner was pretty awesome and worth the effort that my few extra "homemade" steps took.

Make-Your-Own-Pasta
A girlfriend of mine, Roxanne, casually mentioned that she had stopped buying pasta because it is just so easy to make your own. Little does she know that her remark has been residing in the back of my mind for sometime now and I have just been waiting for the right opportunity to make my own pasta. (Roxanne also makes killer egg rolls. She made them recently for a get together and I played the pregnancy card to eat way more than my fair share. They are also on my list of things to make...but, I digress). Late last night (okay, who am I kidding, it was 7:30 and I was about to fall asleep) I was browsing through my cookbooks looking for something to read (seriously, I read cookbooks when I am not in the middle of another book) and lo and behold there was a yet unopened one: "Mastering Pasta, Noodles, & Dumplings". I read much of the book and decided that I was going to make pasta for dinner tonight, come hell or high water. Only I had a few problems. #1: I burnt out the motor on my food processor last week (think smoke and fumes) and haven't replaced it yet and #2: I don't have a pasta roller. I considered the alternatives - go out and buy a pasta roller and a new food processor or make everything by hand. Well, I abhor driving and I love kneading so I chose option two. I was also on this homemade-high and thinking I could take on any dough. Dummy.

Actually the pasta came out really good but it was way too thick. I even had my husband help me roll it but he gave up after a minute or two. Unless you like thick pasta, buy a pasta roller and save yourself a s**tload of time and energy. Oh, and to add to the patheticness of my rolling out pasta was the fact that I am so short I generally stand on a stool to knead or roll out dough. So there I am, laboring away over this freaking dough on a little tiny kitchen stool. Quite the sight. Despite my minor set backs I highly recommend making your own pasta, even if it is just once. I also made italian bread using a recipe that has been a go-to for me for a long time. It is really easy - do the dough in the bread machine, shape two loaves, let them rise and bake.

Now my big plan for the rest of my life is to make one pasta dish, from scratch, every week and one batch of Italian bread every two weeks. I will just freeze the extra loaf for use on the in between weeks. Add a salad and viola! Homemade dinner in under an hour.

Here is the pasta recipe I used (from Williams-Sonoma Mastering Pasta, Noodles & Dumplings):

Fresh Egg Pasta Dough
2 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
4 large eggs
2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
+ I added about 1tb of italian seasoning to the flour

-Combine dough in food processor (assuming you haven't recently burned out the motor in yours)
-Turn out dough on lightly floured surface and gently knead it.
-Allow dough to rest for 30 minutes under a large bowl (this prevents it from drying out)
-Put dough in your pasta roller following manufacturers instructions (assuming you have one. Otherwise start rolling. Stop, beg family members to help, roll more, stop, decide you wanted to make thick pasta all along and cut dough with a pizza cutter using the edge of a cutting board as your guide).
-Allow pasta strands to dry for 10-20 minutes.
-Boil for 1-3 minutes (or, in the case of thicker pasta, 7-9 minutes)

The mushroom sauce that I made to accompany the pasta was really fantastic (who am I kidding? I have never tasted anything made with real heavy cream that wasn't fantastic) and so very easy to make as well. Also from the same cookbook:

Fettuccine with Mushrooms & Cream
In a frying pan melt 2tb unsalted butter.
Add 10oz sliced mushrooms (I mixed baby bellas and white mushrooms), 1tsp kosher salt and 1/2 tsp ground pepper.
Saute until the mushroom juices evaporate, about 10 minutes.
Add 1 cup of cream and allow to thicken, about 5-10 minutes.
Stir in 2 tb freshly chopped flat leaf parsley.
Taste, die and go to heaven.

Next week: Ravioli