Pasta Drying Rack

Look what I found in a charity shop yesterday lunchtime [rubs hands with glee].

I've been looking for a cheap pasta drying rack for ages and now finally, success! (and really, it would be hard to beat its £3 pricetag). And I'd say it had been used - never - judging from the wood I had to pull out of the holes.

I have the (much, much easier to find in a charity shop) manual pasta machine sitting below the sink and gathering dust. Underneath the aforementioned George Foreman minigrill, to tell the truth. So now I just need to go buy some pasta flour and I'm all set.

Pointers to any tried and trusted pasta recipes will be greatly appreciated.

Comments

[Barbara]

Use Marcella Hazan's pasta recipes. You don't have to use semolina in fresh pasta--in fact, she deplores the practice. She says semolina is for dried pasta, and regular wheat flour is for fresh pasta.

I have made pasta using my old hand-cranked Atlas machine many times! It is fun, and it is really easy. Just be patient, and go slowly, and it helps the first time you make it to have another person with you to act as an extra set of hands when you are rolling out the dough through the rollers, thinner and thinner.

If only we didn't have this big body of water between us, I'd pop on over and we could have a pasta party--it is a lot of fun and really, once you have truly fresh noodles, you will spoil yourself!

Have fun!

[Christina]

Thanks! I'll check it out. So should I get the OO Farina for pasta or not? Though that's wheat flour isn't it? [looks confused]

Well, if you ever make it over the pond we will definitely have to party! :-)

[Barbara]

"Farina" is a difficult term. Because in Italian and English it can denote just plain old wheat flour, but in English, it can also denote a hard wheat flour (but not made of durum wheat--that flour is always called semolina.)

So, if you mean just plain old flour, farina is fine. If you are meaning hard wheat flour meant for pasta that is akin to semolina--no, you don't need that to make handmade pasta.

Here, I will transcribe what Marcella has to say on the subject from page 129 of her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (which is a combined edition of The Classic Italian Cookbook and More Classic Italian Cooking--this is my Italian cooking bible, which is now falling apart):

The flour: In Italy, the classic fresh egg pasta produce in the Bolognese style is made with a flour known as 00. doppio zero. It is a talcum-soft white flour, less strong in gluten than American all-purpose flour of either the bleached or unbleached variety. When, outside of Italy, I make fresh pasta at home, I have found that unbleached all-purpose flour does the most consistently satisfying job: It is easy to work with; the pasta it produces is plump and has a marvelous texture and fragrance.

Confusion exists over the merits of semolina, which is milled from durum, the hardest and strongest of the wheats. In Italian, it is called semolina di grano duro and you will find it listed on Italian packages of factory-made pastas. It is the only suitable flour for industrial produced pasta, but I do not prefer it for home use. To begin with, its consistency is often grainy, even when it is sold as pasta flour and grainy semolina is frustrating to work with. Even when it is milled to the fine, silky texture you need, you must use a machine to roll it out. To try to do it with a rolling pin is to face a nearly hopeless struggle. My advice is to leave semolina flour to factories and to commercial pasta makers: At home, use unbleached all-purpose flour.

Now. That said--I don't know what you call the equivalent of the American all purpose flour in Britain. But I bet you know--so that is the flour she suggests.

Well, at some point, Zak and I both want to return to the UK for a visit--we have both been there separately, but not together. We want to bring my daughter, Morganna, who is now fifteen, along--for I know that she will love London, and I think that she should see the ancestral homelands of much of my mother's family.

So, someday in the next year or so, I may take you up on that offer of partying!

[Barbara]

00 Farina--that is probably exactly what you want. I realized I left that sentence out. So excited about talking about travel....duh. Silly me.

[Christina]

LOL! Thank you for that! :-)