All Things Tagliatelle

Homemade Egg Pastas

Ingredients

Per serving…

• 100g 00 or AP flour
• 1 large egg

Steps

Do not follow these instructions. Find a video, watch how it’s done. Try it. Fuck it up. Try it again. Open a bottle of Montepulciano. Eat pasta. Be happy.

• Make a mound of the flour
• Make a big hole in the middle like a volcano (usually using the shelled egg)
• Break the eggs in the middle
• Stir flour into the eggs until you get a shaggy mess
• Knead it a until its a smooth evenly distributed blob. Do not overknead or you won’t be able to roll it.
• Take a wooden rolling pin, dust it with flower, and roll the dough until a thick horizontal sheet that will fit in the machine.
• Follow the instructions on your pasta machine. You star at the widest setting, run it through the machine, fold it over itself, run it again, and then go to the next setting down.
• Then run it through the slicer. I almost always use the thickest setting which is technically tagliolini but whatever.
• Set it up to dry for 15m
• Boil salted water. Add the pasta when it hits boiling. It’s done when 66-75% of the pasta is floating the top. When 100% is floating its overcooked. You are required to taste one noodle and share a piece with your beagle.

Gear

You need this exact pasta machine. There’s cheaper, but this is what they use in Italy and the second I upgraded I got much better results.

Some kind of drying rack is also useful. Do not skip drying, or your pasta will not hold together.

And entirely optional, but I like this silicon mat for working with dough. The dough doesn’t stick to it and you can just throw it in the sink rather than carefully washing down your counter.

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking says I needed a wide saute pan. And… I have an addiction so I don’t need that much convincing. I got this OXO. Here’s the thing… you use less water, it cooks faster, and when working with dry noddles they fit across without breaking. I should have gotten one of these years ago.

House Tomato Sauce

This is an old family recipe, and it’s the same one we use to make lasagna.

Is it a Ragu? ChatGPT says yes, the Italians say no and wave their hands around a lot shouting why this is Americanized nonsense. Who’s to say who’s correct? (Hint: it’s never the robot.)

You can substitute the beef for a big handful of tomatoes if you want a vegetarian friendly version or didn’t defrost any meat out last night and just want to get the simmer started.

Ingredients

I’m including the original ratios. I use far more than this and just sort of eyeball it. Tinker to taste.

• 1lb ground beef
• 2 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt. But really you need to taste for saltiness.
• 1 teaspoon oregano
• 0.25 teaspoon black pepper
• 0.125 teaspoon garlic powder. This is nonsense. A heavy dusting or a few chopped cloves is good.
• 2 tablespoon onion flake. Or dice and include a small onion.
• 2 12oz cans diced tomatoes
• 2 cups Tomato Juice
• 2 6oz cans tomato paste
• Handful of fresh tomatoes, chopped (my addition, optional)
• Basil to garnish

Steps

1. Brown meat with a little olive oil in a big pot or dutch oven
2. Add tomatoes in all forms (diced, paste, juice, chopped fresh)
3. Simmer 2 hours

Serve over pastas with fresh parmesan, or feta. Sometimes garnish with an olive or basil.

Pesto

The recipe comes from a cooking class so I can’t share it, but there’s a billion different pesto recipes out there and they all amount to something like this:

Take a ton of basil, garlic, parmesan, some pine nuts, throw it in a food processor and add olive oil as it blends until you get a sauce. Set aside.

Then when your pasta is done, return it to the pan and give it a pesto bath.

You can use a blend of basil and parsley since sometimes its hard to find enough basil. Seriously, so much basil.

The correct way to do this is with mortal and pestle. I’ve tried both. The mortal version is a lot more work and tended to pack the sauce into a condensed paste that tends to clump rather than spread event across the pasta. By comparison, the food processor made a thin green sauce that spread over everything perfectly.

Garlic and Chili Oil

Aka Aglio e Olio, a classic Roman recipe.

I had this on a particularly hot (but breezy, always breezy) day in Lake Cuomo. It’s an excellent summer pasta and I had to figure out to make it when we got home.

Ingredients

• 2 garlic cloves
• Red pepper flakes
• Salt
• Pepper
• Parmesan
• 8 small tomatoes
• 0.3 cup EVOO
• Scallions
• Parsley

Steps

1. Start boiling pasta
2. Mince garlic
3. Simmer garlic, red pepper flakes, and salt in oil in a small dutch oven. Be careful not to burn it. Maybe add a little black pepper.
4. Prep toppings
   1. Grate parmesan
   2. Chop scallions
   3. Halve tomatoes
5. When then pasta is ready, take a small ladle of pasta water and add it to the oil mixture. The move pasta into the chili/garlic-oil and cook with tomatoes for a minute to so.
6. Serve in bowls topped with scallions, cheese, parsley, in that order.