making fresh pasta

Last night we had one of my favorite veggie meals, “pasta with asparagus and shiitakes.” Since Jim isn’t such a big fan of “vegetarian night” as we call it, I also made fresh black pepper pasta to make the dish more exciting for him. Making pasta isn’t really any more complicated than any dough recipe. For two people, I generally use about a cup of flour and one egg, a bit of salt and a tablespoon or more of water. I added about 4 tsps of freshly ground pepper to the flour. This can easily be doubled and if we’re hungry, I double it since this is not a whole lot of pasta.


Combine all the dry ingredients on a flat surface or a super big bowl, make a well in the center and put the egg and water in, mix the egg with a fork, incorporating the flour slowly, until you have to use your hands. At this point, the dough will be very dry and incredibly annoying because it just won’t come together. Add water, a teaspoon at a time, until most of the flour is incorporated and the dough is just barely kneadable. If you over do it on the water, just add more flour. Then knead on the counter until you can get a smooth ball, about 5-10 minutes. Put in a large plastic bag and allow to rest for an hour. I like to put mine in the fridge for this because I don’t like to leave food on the counter for too long but, some recipes have you leave it on the counter.

I cut the dough into 4 chunks and use an ancient pasta roller to roll the dough and cut it into noodles but, I suppose if you are strong enough, you can use a rolling pin to roll nice flat sheets and cut the noodles by hand. This takes me about 20 minutes for a 4 person batch of pasta. The dough doesn’t really need to dry, so, I usually roll it right before I am going to cook but, you can do it earlier in the day, put it on a plate, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready. I cook it for 3-4 minutes.  Yum!  There is nothing like fresh pasta.