Pasta Success!

After my shortbread disaster on Tuesday I wasn’t sure that flour and I  should be in the kitchen at the same time ever again. . .

But I had planned on making homemade pasta last night and since our delicious Coppa visit got in the way, tonight I was determined to make pasta.

Starting out with a recipe I found on the blog Sugarlaws, I gathered the very simple ingredients required, whole wheat flour, cage free eggs, salt, and water and nervously started making my pasta, hoping to avoid disaster but confident knowing our favorite sushi spot was just a speed dial away!

Making the dough was as easy as mixing the eggs, flour, and salt, then slowly adding water in a spoonful at a time until I could knead it gently into a neat little ball.

I’ll tell you a little secret. We don’t own a rolling pin. A wine bottle works quite well though. 🙂

We took turns rolling out the dough, then rolled it into a coil to cut the pasta into ribbons.

Once the pasta was all cut, we set it aside for awhile so that I could make the spinach pesto. This wintry pesto is an absolute favorite of mine. I used 3 cups of baby organic spinach, 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese, 5 cloves of garlic, 1/4 cup olive oil, salt, and fresh ground black pepper to taste. All whirled around in my food processor and ready to go!

Once the pesto was ready, we got the pasta water boiling complete with a few teaspoons of olive oil and a liberal sprinkling of sea salt. The pasta only took five minutes to float to the top of the water, and it was ready.

In addition to the pesto, I topped the pasta with a scoop of low fat ricotta cheese to add a bit of calcium to the dish. The heat of the pasta melted the cheese and pesto together for a creamy, garlicky sauce. The pasta was good! It was a little too thick and would be better rolled out more next time, but overall I am pretty happy with myself, especially after a killer workout this morning and a busy work day. I am looking forward to making pasta again and to adding flavor to the dough. Trader Joe’s has a lemon black pepper pasta I would love to recreate!

Tomorrow is F-R-I-D-A-Y! I am very excited for the weekend despite the fact that I have a 7.5 mile run on Saturday and it is meant to be bitter cold out! We are going to get our Christmas tree and to do some cooking, shopping, family visiting, and resting! Have a great Friday everyone, and I will “see” you tomorrow!