The pasta trials
As money is in such short supply, I’ve started selling bread (above) and pasta to local friends (and as the season progresses hopefully they’ll buy some veg too!)
The chickens have gone from laying no eggs EVER to laying more than we ever thought possible. This daily delivery has led to me making lots of pasta again… I’ve had this pasta machine for years, a classy bit of kit bought back in the days when we had money. Not only that, it’s made in Torino, Italy and not in China!
Pasta is a great way to use up eggs. For the 4 of us I use 300g of flour (recipes will tell you to use only the finest 00 flour, but I use whatever is in the cupboard and it tastes no different!) and 3 eggs. That’s it! Either kneed by hand or chuck in a food mixer like I do, then begins the fun part of rolling it through the machine. It’s very therapeutic and I highly recommend it!
Anyway, this time the purpose of making pasta was to do some experiments on the drying side of things. I usually cook it straight away, but it seems like a good idea to be able to make some and then store for a future emergency.
This is my home-made drying rack, it’s just a rake handle hanging off a couple of nails and is high-up to avoid children and cats. Hanging here are tagliatelle, linguine and pappardelle.
Deborah said,
May 2, 2008 @ 7:50 am
What a coincidence, I’m about to have a go at pasta too with the pasta maker I bought back when I had money but no time to use it! Now I have no money and with the planting/growing season here I’m not sure about the time either!!!
I’m sure it will be like the bread making, you think it will take ages but actually it takes very little time and the results are so worth it.
Since I’m registered as a farmer I don’t think I would be able to get away with selling the pasta unless I registered again as something relevant and pay another cottisation - I do hope Sarkosy opens up this restriction on enterprise sometime.
vegetablej said,
May 13, 2008 @ 11:28 pm
Had one of those wonderful machines at one time. They work very well.
Your pasta is beautiful!!!