Fork and Gobble it: Fresh Pasta Primer

Fridays on the BottleBlog will feature a food-related article, wine pairing, or travelogue. Today, Wine Manager Mark Ricca shows us how pasta is done.

Lasagne has always been an important dish in my repertoire and I've always enjoyed making it as much as those I serve it to enjoy eating it. (Is there really anyone who doesn't love good lasagne?) I learned the recipe from my mom and it is the standard Americanized version of wide noodles, ricotta cheese filling, and tomato sauce, topped with grated mozzarella, and baked until golden brown and gooey. I later learned that this is a far cry from the way the dish is prepared in Italian regions such as Napoli, but that is another chapter. What really got to me was dealing with lasagne noodles. Those long, wide, strips of dried pasta that were so unwieldy, had to be boiled, cooled, and then you could start your assembly. Usually they were broken in the box, stuck together in the pot, and just a general pain in the rump to work with. No boil versions were marginally better, no pre-cooking but trying to fit them to the baking dish was a challenge and I just knew there was a better way. That is when I decided to do it myself. I had some basic experience with fresh pasta, but had never really done it from scratch at home. It was the beginning of a whole new set of ideas to work with, not to mention silly easy lasagne preparation.

Fresh pasta dough is really basic in terms of ingredients and equipment required, but there are some things one might want to consider to make the task a little easier. Let's talk about requirements first. You will need a suitable work surface. A countertop or large table of comfortable height that is durable and offers sufficient space is first. I own a marble slab about 18” x 24” which I place on my kitchen table. So long as it's durable and non porous, you're okay. Next, a good rolling pin is also a must, although I have seen improvisations with anything from bottles to whatever is handy. I took the plunge early on and purchased an Atlas pasta machine, but a rolling pin should work fine.

Now to ingredients, All Purpose unbleached flour, eggs, water, olive oil, and salt. How's that? Pretty basic huh? Let's get to this.

Basic Pasta Dough
Yields 1 16”x9” Lasagne 4 Layers

-3 cups AP unbleached flour, sifted
-1 tsp Kosher salt
-3 large eggs + 1 yolk
-2 Tbsp water
-1 Tbsp Extra Virgin or good quality olive oil

Sift the flour and salt onto the work surface. Using a fork, make a large well in the center of the flour. Put the eggs and yolk in the well. I recommend cracking each egg into a small bowl before putting them into the flour in case you get a bad one or you need to remove shell fragments. Add the water and olive oil. As a side note, if you wanted to do a flavored pasta, such as herb, pepper, spinach, etc., this is where you would add that ingredient. In these images I am doing a black pepper pasta for a tagliatelle cut.

Using your fork, break the yolks and mix the ingredients in the well, bringing a little flour into the well as you do so. Gradually work more and more of the flour into the well.

When the liquid in the well is more dough than liquid, and most of the flour has been incorporated, start working the dough with your hands, kneading it into a ball and picking up the rest of the flour. Another tool I find helpful here is what is called a bench scraper. This is a baker/pastry tool that is basically a metal square with a handle on one side. You can scrape flour and dough that has scattered back into the middle of the table very easily. A metal spatula will work on this also, but if this is going to be a regular thing for you, the bench scraper is well worth the money. (Pssst, they're cheap)

Hey... this is a food and wine blog, right? Right! I like to have a glass on the side while I'm doing this. Usually something light and refreshing like a Vinho Verde, (I like the Arca Nova that we carry at Joe Canal's Woodbridge and Lawrenceville,) or even a simple Chianti. (Cecchi Monteguelfo is ideal.) This is comfort food. Might as well get comfortable!

Continue to knead the dough for at least 10 minutes, and put some muscle into it! You are developing the glutens that give the dough its elasticity. You will see that the dough gets smoother and less sticky and wet. Once it has reached this stage it will need to rest. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for about an hour.

That is all there is to making the dough. What you do with it from here is only limited by imagination. This is the base for lasagne, ravioli, tortelline, etc.. In my lasagne application, I roll the dough through my Atlas pasta machine into silky thin sheets which I am able to cut to fit into the baking pan.

This was the Americanized version of lasagne, using ricotta as a filling, but the marinara is mine as is the pasta dough. Exalted to artisanal is what it is now. That machine will also cut tagliatelle or a finer cut, more like spaghetti a la chittara. (Spaghetti that is made by pressing fresh pasta sheets over a contraption of wires strung over a box that resembles a guitar, to make square spaghetti.)

Here, the above black pepper pasta dough was cut into tagliatelle and tossed with grilled baby artichokes in an oil and garlic sauce:


So you see, that basic dough recipe and the technique to produce it can yield many results from simple to superb.

And the wines? ...With the lasagne, a good quality Chianti like the Monteguelfo from Cecchi or a Piedmont red that I have really been exploring lately... Dolcetto! I mentioned in my last piece the Aldo Conterno Dolcetto Langhe Masante, which I love, and I also recently had the Dolcetto d'Alba from Bruno Giacosa, another of Piedmont's master producers.

With the above dish, it is a little more difficult as artichokes present a challenge. They are best suited to an assertive white such as the nervy and minerally Sauvignon Blancs from South Africa. Mulderbosch and Southern Right make fine examples of those.

I'd love to hear how your homemade pasta comes out! Feel free to post below and let me hear about it, or if there is anything else I can share.

Enjoy!!!