In some of the video games I play, progress is stopped until you have a item that allows you to progress. One of the items that was stopping me from progressing in my national dish quest was not having the ability to make pasta/noodles. To resolve this I bought a pasta maker and decides to tackle the Italian national dish of … pasta.
A lot of the times the challenge in preparing to do a new entry for the blog is finding the right recipe or even what to make. As you know there are many varieties of pasta dishes that exist. What pasta is representative of Italy? I was doing my research when I found this quote regarding Pasta al Pomodoro, “If you ask an Italian chef which single recipe is best at evaluating a cook’s skills, they will tell you spaghetti al pomodoro.”. I took that quote as a challenge and decided to tackle this dish.
Now the instructions given with the pasta maker left a lot to be desired. Only the ingredients portion of the instructions was clear which was to mix 4 eggs with three cups of flour.
Once the eggs and flour are all mixed up you need to roll the mixture into a ball and let it rest for a couple of minutes. While the dough ball is resting cover with a towel over the top to prevent the dough from drying out.
This is where we ran into a little bit of trouble. The dough needs to be not sticky at all or else it will not move cleanly through the rollers. To reduce the stickiness of the dough, all you need to do is add flour, in my situation it was a lot of flour. Seriously, use a lot of flour, the dough cannot stick at all.
Hard at work rolling out the dough!
The combination is to roll out the dough by hand, and then use the rollers on the Pasta maker to further roll out the dough.
After the dough is at the desired thickness(you can modify this with the pasta maker) trim the dough to the desired length and then send it through the pasta cutter. The first batch that went through was not trimmed nearly enough and the spaghetti strands were way too big as you can see in the video.
Finally just continue until all the spaghetti is made.
With the pasta made, it was time to get started on making the sauce. Pomodoro simply means tomato in Italian so Pasta Al Pomodoro translates to Pasta with Tomato sauce(Sounds as appealing as SpaghettiOs™ when translated).
Below are the ingredients for the sauce. The most import ingredient in the sauce is the use of high quality tomatoes. No recipe showed using fresh tomatoes, they all recommended high quality tomatoes like San Marzano. San Marzano tomatoes are grown in Italy in volcanic soil which make them perfect for this recipe.
To start we need to start by cooking the onions in the olive oil until they are soft. The smell of onions cooking is one of my favorite things about cooking.
Next you will need to add the garlic and the red pepper flakes and continue cooking for one more minute then add the tomatoes. Cook the tomatoes for 20 minutes and remove from the heat.
Stirring is a lot of fun!
When the 20 minutes are up, stir in the Basil sprigs and set aside while you boil the pasta. Fresh homemade pasta cooks a lot faster than store bought pasta so cook no longer than 3 minutes. Once the pasta is cooked reserve 1/4 cup of the water you cooked the spaghetti in and add it to the sauce. To finish bring the sauce temperature back up to boiling, add the Spaghetti, butter, and Parmesan cheese and mix together.
Homemade pasta is ridiculous good. It is has a wonderful light taste and texture and is fun to make. I was reserved about how much better homemade pasta could be from store bought but it is much better. The Al Pomodoro sauce was amazing as well, as the basil and tomatoes blended together nicely.
Plated up and ready to serve!
Recipe for the Pasta al Pomodoro is available here.