A Pasta Virgin No Longer

I lost my pasta making virginity on the last day of 2006.

Yes, really. I've been claiming to be a foodie in league with the best of them, but it is only shy of three months ago I ventured into the land of pasta-making. Why no sooner? Surely, pasta is easy to make?

Guess I just never saw the need, really. I love my De Cecco pasta. Of course, you don't get that with interesting stuffing, but I'm all about sauce anyways - preferably something creamy and clingy. So what's with the idea of making dough, leaving it to rest, roll it, thinner, thinner, and then just a little bit thinner again, and then spend ages making neat little packages out of them?

Well - that - spending ages making little packages, is exactly the point of it all, if you ask me. The fact that I'm using my Kitchen Aid attachment - hereby sticking to one of my 2007 dares - makes this even better, and faster and easier, too. If you haven't already tried, do so. It's worth it (and you can still put a creamy sauce on top - just wanted to make sure we're clear on that)

The fact that you can put anything you could ever want into these makes this no less fun. I'm very much still a novice in the tortellini-ravioli-what-have-you-department - but I am definitely a convert. There's no looking back. Making pasta is so the new kneading.

I've made two kinds of stuffed pasta so far - the pasta dough itself - well, we use 300 g. flour to 3 medium eggs - I know a lot of recipes use all egg yolks, but I haven't gone as far as to experiment with the pasta itself - for now, I stick to stuffing-fun!

The stuffing picture, above, was what I used for our New Years Dinner Ravioli Course - it's lobster meat, mascarpone, dill, chives, lemon zest and salt and pepper. The ravioli were served in a lobster consommé and garnished with a little dill. These were kinda big ravioli, so I used a teaspoonful of stuffing for each and each guest had three. Lovely - and makes lobster go far!

The tortellini pictured in the beginning of the post we made this Saturday. Martin sautéed some sliced serrano ham, shiitake mushrooms, brown mushrooms and a little dried, but rehydrated, morels. We had some majoram around, so it got a shot of that, too. Left it to cool, and then we mixed it with a really nice fresh goat's cheese and used about half a teaspoon stuffing for each tortellini. The method for making them came straight from Jamie Oliver (the second book, I think it was) and worked a charm. I love their little puffy bellies!

As I said already - not the last you've seen of pasta around here!