Dinner last night: Fresh Paparadelli Pasta with a Shitaki Mushroom Cream Sauce. Perfect on these blistering cold 65 degree Winter nights.
If you are interested in getting your feet wet (or hands) with making any kind of dough, pasta is a good place to start. Unlike bread, there is no yeast to contend with or a rise time. Five eggs and four cups of flour, mixed in a KitchenAid until it becomes a smooth sticky ball. Just watch, it’ll happen. The dough needs to rest so that the egg is completely incorporated into the flour. Cover the ball with clear wrap (so it doesn’t develop a crust) and put in the refrigerator for an hour or so.
If you have a KitchenAid mixer and you don’t have the pasta roller attachment, do your self a favor. It will turn a chore into an afterthought. You’ll be banging out pasta for complete strangers on idle Monday nights.
I used to cook mushrooms over too high a flame. I liked to get a little char on them, but I would end up pulling them too early and they weren’t cooked all the way through yet. Medium to Medium High flame (one and a half log campfire, if you are camping) should be fine. For the cream sauce, I reduce two parts heavy cream to one part Vermouth. I’m not huge on mushrooms (or camping), but every now and again, nothing beats it.
OK, I have been back and forth about whether to pony up for a Kitchenaid. Those pasta photos convinced me.
Also, I have never seen a recipe with a campfire heat setting. Brilliant.
Thanks. You never know where you might find yourself cooking pasta!
Thanks for the inspiration! My husband was extremely proud of himself that he finally got me the pasta roller for my kitchenaid that i’d been begging for for a year. When I opened it, it was decidedly NOT a roller, it was a spaghetti extruder! Umm…close.
Wanted to say your “banging out spaghetti for complete strangers” line had me lol.
Sounds like your husband needs a do-over. Amazon is open 24hrs!