Ok

I am assuming that you have your pasta dough that you made from the pasta node.

Now you have two choices that will be governed by your kitchen arsenal. You will either have a pasta machine, or a rolling pin, and a fair amount of spare time plus a keen desire to taste the wonders of fresh pasta.

If you have a pasta machine, simply take a small amount of the dough and squash it flat. The pasta machine will have a series of notches that you can calibrate on the left-hand side. Place your dough into the main rollers and turn the handle. The 2 cm (1 inch) knob of dough will turn into a 5 cm (2 inch) piece of pasta.

Here is the important part. Almost every chef I have worked with stuffs up here. Take this 5cm piece of dough and fold it in half. Stick it back in the rollers and turn again. This may get repetitive, but keep doing this before turning the rollers down a notch. You will need to get a silky smooth piece of pasta before you try and roll it out thinly.

Once the dough is shiny and smooth, turn the notch down one setting and roll it through. Repeat this process, turning the notch down one at a time, until you have a 1 metre (2 ½ ft) piece of flat pasta. At this stage, you can use the cutters that came with you machine and cut the pasta to the desired shape (agniolotti, fettuccine or linguine), or use a knife to cut your desired shape.

Now, If you don't own a pasta machine, don't despair. All you will need is a rolling pin, some flour and a fair whack of a Saturday afternoon.

Take a small piece of the dough. Roll it out fairly thin. Dust with some flour, fold it in half and roll out again. Keep this up as long as your sanity holds out. Now roll the dough out as thin as you can make it (keep trying, you can get it thinner), cut into your desired shape with a very sharp knife.

If you boil this pasta fresh as it is, it will only take until it rises to the surface of the boiling water to cook (just like gnocchi), about 2 - 3 minutes - even less for fine strands of pasta. If you wish to keep your pasta for another day, pack it loosely in a small tray, covered well and freeze for up to 2 months.

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.