Thursday 3 November 2016

Home Made Pasta is the best!!!

So this week our good bud Pam at the most excellent Arch Sixteen café next to the High Level Bridge in Gateshead gave us a pasta maker and recommended we make our own pasta, which we've never done before, so off we went to the supermarket to get some flour and then down to Adam's on Coatsworth Road in Bensham for some mince, tomatoes etc. (If you've never been to Adam's get on the 53/54 bus and stock up on lovely goods for you larder and experience lovely worldwide vibes and customer service at it's finest). First we made the sauce and as with all Bolognese variations, everyone is different (We'd love to know your recipe in the comments below).

When it comes to ingredients we always try to shop independently and local, unless budget says otherwise, so spend some time getting to know your local shopkeeper, butcher, milkman (or woman), fruitshop dude, you'll end up with a friend for life!

This tasted extraordinary, super silky extra tasty and homemade too -  good times!
Ingredients - feeds a hungry family of four

Bolognese Sauce
Mince
Olive Oil
1 Onion
Basil (Dry or fresh)
Chopped Tomatoes (We think they're all the same, so just get the cheapest)
Tomato Puree
Garlic
Salt & ground black pepper
1 tsp of sugar (You can take this out, but it adds a delicious sweetness)

Pasta
2 cups of '00' flour
2/3 eggs
lukewarm water

Heat the oil in a frying pan type vessel and add the onions and garlic continuously moving 'til browned (this adds some nice flavour), then add the mince and keep it moving, when it all looks cooked add a little salt & pepper and one or two cans of chopped tomatoes, and splodge of tomato puree and a sprinkle of dry basil (if you add fresh basil maybe add this later) then slowly cook and add a teaspoon of sugar for that sweetness (you don't have to, but sometimes we do!) leave it on a slow low heat and start to make your fresh pasta

Make a mound of flour like your mixing cement and create a hollow in the middle, crack in two eggs whisk them together and fold in the flour (this is the bit where the egg poured out onto the floor - see photo), when mixed get your hands involved and started to knead the dough til consistent and softened a bit. you can add a little lukewarm water if needs be. Set aside into a bowl in a warm place , cover with a tea towel and go and have a cuppa or something.

then simply feed it into the pasta rollers, into your desired shapes and then boil til cooked (it's much faster than hard packaged pasta, so be aware!) then simply fold into the bolognese mix and reheat and serve.

Our pasta tasted nothing short of mind-blowing, a kinda of silky, smooth taste on the pasta mixed with the sweetness of the bolognese, usually our house is proper noisy but all you could hear was cutlery and people enjoying pasta as it should be, slurped straight off a fork. This has to be a PagePosse ten out of ten.

As ever in the Page Palace (it's actually a small terrace!) we let our kids cook, prep and experiment with food as it's a lifelong skill and utilise all the tools within the kitchen safely and under a cautious supervision - we recommend you do too!


As ever we make sure the kids are in charge, but safe and sound

This bit is sooo good!

Adding the tomatoes

We just used supermarket eggs but the free-er range the better

Pasta is like making cement, make a well drop in the eggs and mix away!

Dad drops everything by accident... doh!

Expect to get messy

Alf loves it

Frank Loves it

Frank's in deep concentration

Alf getting his pasta buzz on!

You need to get '00' grade flour for pasta - this is real important

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1 comment

  1. Well done boys! Making pasta is great fun! The first time I made it I was just amazed at how well it turned out, I thought there's no way this is gonna work, it's just gonna turn into a big sticky mess in the pan! My favourite bolonese recipe is based on Marcella Hazan's - real Italian style which surprisingly means no garlic and no herbs, but onion, carrot, celery, milk, WHITE wine and NUTMEG! And fancy imported Italian tinned tomatoes if you can get them, like San Marzano variety, do make all the difference. They are a bit pricey though, so just use them for special occasions, like when making fresh pasta! Greetings from cuz Chris in Holland. http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015181-marcella-hazans-bolognese-sauce

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