Cook and Save

For some people cooking is just a necessity, but if you follow my rants on this blog it may be because cooking is for you a pleasing way to pass your time. We all know that most students have more time than money, but this time i will break the rule and talk about something that is actually cheaper to buy when it’s already made: pasta! This may not be totally true anyway because the result that you will taste will justify all the time and few extra money spent to do it. Not to mention that doing this with some friends is great fun.

So this is what we need:

• 400 grams of flour
• 4-5 eggs (depending on their size)
• salt

Yeah, that’s it! First of all find a suitable place to work. I found it pretty confortable to put everything in a big pot like this:

Now it’s time to get your hands dirty and mix all the ingredients for several minutes until you get a nice and uniform dough.

Now you will need to let the dough rest for about half an hour. No yeast is involved in the process so this is just to let the ingredients get together and let the dough cool down a bit. Now cut your dough in 2 or 3 equal parts and use a rolling pin to obtain a thin sheet of dough out of every of them. Remember to sparke some flour both on the surface you are going to use and the rolling pin to avoid the dough to stick. Take your time during this process and work with patience.

Once the sheets are ready cut them in stripes about 7 or 8 millimiters wide (0.3 inches). Sperkle the result with more flour. This shape of pasta is called “Tagliatelle”.

Now let your tagliatelle dry a bit. To do this you have to let them hang from, for example, a wooden stick or anything else that will do the trick. After a few hours your homemade pasta wil be ready to be cook in abundant boiling salted water for a few minutes. The boiling time depends on how thin you were able to stretch your dough so just taste every once in a while.

Tagliatelle taste really good, especially when dressed with ragù (meat sauce). The recipe for the sauce can be found in my recipe for lasagne! Well, here is the result:

Remember to add some parmisan cheese! And now enjoy the result!