Making Fresh Pasta

Plus: lessons learned, and your feedback on my first cooking video

I have to start by saying how grateful I am to all of you who reached out with comments, feedback and suggestions on my first cooking video that I posted last week. This has been a big learning experience for me, and to give you some “behind the scenes” of the video process, it took about:

• two hours to set up my kitchen for cooking and filming,

• three hours to film all the videos,

• only one opportunity to re-shoot a segment since I was filming it all “in the moment”

• several lost video clips as my SD card ran out of room, and

• eight hours to edit the two video segments.

As they say in the industry, I still have a bunch of video content “in the can,” but I’ve decided that I want to keep each video under 10 minutes in length, so I’ll be breaking the rest of the parts of the recipe into separate videos. So, for this post, I was able to create one video for the pasta-making process, and another showing how I made the fillings, then rolling and stuffing the ravioli. I’m still working on the video showing me cooking the ravioli and making the sauce. I’m starting a short-term contract for the next month so I won’t have as much free time to work on videos. As I finish them, I will release them, regardless of what day of the week it is or whether it fits my usual Tuesday schedule (I also plan to release videos for my wine and baking content.)

While I’m still learning how to make things better—both in front of and behind the camera—I’m quite happy with the way these two turned out. I hope you are, too.

Below, I have included some additional content/info that was not in the video, such as the exact recipe and where I got it from. If you think I missed any important details, please let me know in the comments.

Book: Simple Pasta: Pasta Made Easy. Life Made Better. by Odette Williams (2022, Ten Speed Press)

Making the Pasta

Pasta recipe:

• 300g “00” Flour (specific for pasta-making)

• 3 large eggs

• 1/2 tsp salt (Kosher or sea salt)

• 1 1/2 tsp olive oil

Method:

• Weigh your flour, add the salt, and place it on a large wooden cutting board or large, clean countertop. If you’re using a cutting board, make sure you place a wet tea towel or gripper pad underneath so that it doesn’t move away from you.

• Form it into a circle with a well in the centre (like a volcano.)

• Crack the eggs and put them in the centre of the well of flour.

• Add the olive oil (I forgot to do that in the video, but added it later and it was fine.)

• Using a fork, beat the eggs in the centre of the mound of flour, gradually incorporating flour from around the edges, being careful not to “break” the walls of the “volcano” and allowing the egg to run out.

• As more flour is incorporated, the dough will start to thicken and resemble cake batter. Once it gets to this point, you can start mixing the dough by hand by gently folding it over itself several times and incorporating more flour until it’s thick enough to start kneading.

• Brush away the excess flour and knead the dough until it is smooth and soft, about 10 minutes.

• Form it into a ball, wrap with plastic wrap, and put the dough in the fridge to rest while you clean up and get ready to make the fillings (about 30 minutes.)

Notes:

As I said in the video, if you can’t find “00” flour, you can use all-purpose flour. There are also two different types of “00” flour: one for pasta and one for pizza. The pizza flour has more gluten in it, which is better for making bread dough.

Rolling and Cutting

Here is the second video that shows the basics of making fillings, rolling, cutting, and stuffing the ravioli.

I have a set of attachments for my KitchenAid mixer. One is to roll the pasta out to increasing levels of thinness, the other two are to cut the pasta into spaghetti or linguine/fettuccini. There are also manual pasta rollers/cutters that clamp onto your counter and you use a crank to turn the rollers and cutters. There are electric versions of this machine as well. Some machines will mix and knead the dough for you, and some have extruders (rather than cutters) if you want pasta shapes like macaroni, penne, or rigatoni. Or, you can do it the old fashioned way with a rolling pin and some “elbow grease.”

No matter which method you choose, you need to start with a fairly small piece of dough, a bit bigger than the size of a golf ball, but not quite as large as a tennis ball. Flatten the ball and dust it well with flour. The first few passes through the rollers should be at the thickest setting (#1) and you should fold it into thirds (like a letter,) turn it by 90 degrees and feed it back through the machine (this part was not shown in the video.) Do this 2-4 times until the dough is smooth and even. After that, you can turn the dial to the next setting (#2) and run it through again. With each turn of the dial, the dough thins out and will get longer and longer (but only as wide as the rollers themselves.) If the dough ever feels sticky, dust it with a bit more flour. As you progress to each number setting, you only have to run it through once per setting, getting it to #5 (or #6 if you dare) by the end (I stopped at #4 and felt the dough was a bit thick once it was boiled.) If doing it by hand, roll the dough out until it is as thin as you can get it without tearing.

To make long/ribbon-shaped pasta, you can run it through a cutter, or do it by hand. It’s tough to get it really narrow by hand, so most people make tagliatelle or pappardelle, which are wider than linguini and fettuccini. Dust it well with flour, then fold it over on itself several times until it’s about 2” wide. Use a sharp knife to cut it into 1/4” strips, then separate the strips from each other with more flour and leave in a pile (like a nest) to dry until ready to cook.

Stuffed Pasta

For ravioli, roll the dough out as above, then lay it flat on your board. You’ll either need two strips of pasta (one for the bottom and one for the top) or you can fold one half of the sheet over the other half, whichever you prefer. Prepare your fillings in advance (see two recipes below) and keep them refrigerated until ready to use. Fill a piping bag or zipper bag (with the corner cut off) and portion out the filling across the bottom layer of the pasta, ensuring you’ve left enough room between each one to allow them to be sealed and cut.

Tip: I used my ravioli cutters to make a small impression on the bottom layer of dough to ensure it was spaced out properly, then put my filling right in the middle of where the markings were for each one.

With a brush or your fingers, put a small amount of water around the perimeter of your filling, then place the top layer of pasta on, pressing down firmly all around each little “pillow” of filling to ensure it’s sealed and that there are no gaps or air bubbles. You can then use a ravioli cutter, a cookie cutter, or even just your knife to cut the ravioli into shapes. You can leave the filled ravioli out at room temperature while waiting to cook them (putting them in the fridge can make them turn sticky.) Put them on a parchment-lined baking sheet, making sure they aren’t touching each other.

Fillings

I made two fillings this time, one with ricotta cheese and one with sweet potato and squash.

Ricotta filling

• 1 cup extra smooth ricotta cheese

• 1/4 cup finely grated parmesan cheese

• 5-6 basil leaves, finely chopped

• Salt & Pepper to taste

• 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

• 2 Tbsp heavy cream (milk is OK if you don’t have cream)

Sweet Potato & Squash

• 1 med sweet potato, baked until very soft

• 1 cup butternut squash, cooked and mashed

• 1 Tbsp butter (mashed into the squash or sweet potato while they’re hot)

• Salt & Pepper to taste

• 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

• 5-6 fresh sage leaves*, sautéed in:

  • 1 Tbsp good quality olive oil

  • 1 Tbsp butter

*This part was not in the video because I lost the clip: Sauté the sage leaves over medium heat in the butter and olive oil until they just start to crisp up (but don’t let them go brown.) Drain onto a paper towel, then finely chop them and add to the sweet potato and squash mixture. Save the sage-infused oil & butter mixture for later.

Tip: I had some of both fillings left over and put them inside an omelet for dinner then other night. It was fantastic! These fillings would also be nice inside crêpes with a béchamel or rosé sauce on top.

Cooking

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, then add a generous amount of Kosher or fine sea salt (unsalted water comes to a boil faster, and putting salt in a cold pot of water makes it sink, which can cause pits on the bottom of your cookware.) Whether stuffed or in ribbons, fresh pasta only needs to be cooked for 2-3 minutes. If your pasta dries out a bit after cutting it, it might take a bit longer, but it won’t affect the finished product. Drain well before serving, being sure to save some of that pasta cooking water to make your sauce. The starch will help to make a lovely thick sauce that will coat whichever pasta you serve it with.

What’s Next

As mentioned above, I will have one more video on cooking the ravioli and making the sauce in the coming days/weeks.

Which shape of pasta do you like best? Do you think you’ll try your hand at Ravioli? Or go for pappardelle first?

As always, any and all feedback or questions are welcome!