Call me Chef Boyardee....24. Make Homemade Pasta

As I reflect on all of things I am good at, it is hard for me to pinpoint more than three.  1. Most would agree that I good at my job.  2. I can plan one heck of a party.  3. I am a fairly decent athlete (volleyball, running).  Don't worry, I'm not looking for a pity party or instant gratification from anyone with this post.  Reflecting on my lack of talents makes me more motivated to accomplish  my bucket list and find more things to be good at.  One of the reasons I decided to create my bucket list was to gain life experience that I may have lacked in my 29 years.  One experience and/or talent that I did not acquire growing up was cooking.  Luckily, I married a man who loves to cook & bake.  My sister, Annie, cannot cook either and also lucked out in that department.  I define being able to cook by the ability to make a meal.  If I have a recipe, I can make dinner, but I could never walk into the kitchen and make a good meal.  As a strong-willed, independent woman I want to be able to cook, darn it!  I'm not asking to have it all, just basic knowledge that I can someday pass along to my offspring.  I also want to keep our past family traditions (Byers & Dennis) alive.  With all of that reflection I added #24 to my bucket list - "Make Homemade Pasta".

1.  Start a blog
2. Go to the Presidential Inauguration / visit DC
3. Run a destination 1/2 Marathon
4. Compete in Mrs. Missouri pageant [in progress]
4. Eating a raw oyster
6. Ride a mechanical bull
7. Cook a traditional Thanksgiving dinner by myself
8. Shoot a gun/target shooting
9.  Go Mushroom hunting
10.  Learn to sew / make something I can wear
11. Visit a state I have never been to
12. Ride in a hot air balloon
13. Learn to play craps
14. Eat at Oklahoma Joe's BBQ
15. Complete one Pinterest craft project
16. Take a walking tour of a Civil War Battlefield
17. Learn to make a pie from scratch
18. Make Grandma's kolache cookies correctly
19. Take a shot of Jack Daniels
20. Take a cake decorating class and then decorate my own cake
21. Do at least one pull-up
22. Visit Graceland
23. Take a train ride/ weekend trip to Herman, Mo.
24. Make homemade pasta
25. Run a 8 min/mile 5K
26. Take ballet class from the KC Ballet (Newly added to-do!)
27. 
28.
29.
30.

Our good friends Tyson & Erica are moving away to Portland very soon so we invited them along with Josh Hayley to our house for dinner.  I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to test my pasta making skills.  No specific reason except I needed to keep checking items off my list and people needed to eat.  Even though we own at least 20 cookbooks, I decided to Google how to make homemade pasta.  I came across a simple (or so I thought) recipe from Mario Batali.  You can find the recipe here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/mario-batali/fresh-pasta-recipe/index.html.  

Anyone who knows us will agree that The Denni love to entertain.  The one major component to a good home for entertaining friends is a big kitchen.  Our small kitchen makes two person cooking difficult.  It is good thing I wouldn't let Justin help me out on this one.

I am standing at our back door taking this picture.  I love our house but the kitchen is too small!

Before I even started locating the ingredients, I poured myself a glass of wine.  Wine is tasty and keeps me calm.

The ingredients to homemade pasta are super simple: Flour & Eggs.  Super cheap to make and easy to toss it out and start over if it doesn't work.  

The first step is to make a well with the flour.  I had to Google how to make a well because I wasn't familiar with this cooking lingo.  Like most cooking terms, it is literally what it is called.  I always feel quite dumb.  It is a good thing Google doesn't judge me.  Though I feel that volcano would be a more appropriate term.

The next step was to add the eggs to the well and beat them within the flour.  I was quite apprehensive when I read this because it sounded like a mess.  I was surprised when I was able to beat the eggs with a fork inside my flour volcano.   Next you "begin to incorporate the flour starting with the inner rim of the well.  As you incorporate the eggs, keep pushing the flour up to retain the well shape".  Easier sad that done Mario!  When I started to move the flour, the eggs quickly ran out of the volcano and all over the counter.  I immediately started tossing flour onto my eggs to stop it from running away (No picture is available because my hands were too messy to touch my phone).  I realized then that this was not going to be as easy as I originally thought.  Good thing a poured myself a glass of wine.  The recipe called for 3 1/2 cups of flour and 4 extra large eggs.  I had 4 cups of flour in my well and 4 large eggs.  By the time I had some resemblance of dough I had added 2 extra eggs and loss maybe a 1/2 cup or more of flour.  Mario says I should have elastic, sticky dough.  My dough ball are a rock!  I continued to knead thinking that would help soften my dough.  That was not true.  I finally gave up and wrapped up the dough to rest.  

Kneading dough.  I was literally putting my body weight into it!  

Since the recipe stated 1 pound of pasta/ 4 servings and we were entertaining a total of 6, I decided to try it again.  This time I started with less flour and gradually added in egg.  That method worked better and I ended with more of a dough ball and less of a dough rock.  I also ended up with a ton of pasta.  Why would I ever think 1 pound of pasta is a small amount?

After my dough balls rested for 30 minutes I begin to roll them out.  If you didn't already guess, my dough rock was incredibly difficult to roll out.  A co-worked mentioned to me when I talked about pasta making how I would hate hand rolling the dough.  Let's just say it was a good arm work-out.  Most of the noodles were a little thick but I didn't really set a standard before I started.  

I felt like I stood in the same spot in the kitchen for hours!  In the end it took me about 4 hours to finish just the prep.  I also made a giant mess.  Flour ended up just about everywhere around me. 








I read that the noodles would not take as long to cook as store bought noodles.  The article was most likely referencing thin, normal size homemade noodles and not my "french fry" noodles.  After 10 minutes of boiling the thicker ones were still undercooked.  I decided to serve anyway.  










All of my dinner guests enjoyed the meal.  In fact, everyone was impressed that the noodles were homemade.  As they should be, because it took a lot of work!  As I have stated in previous posts, my goal here is to learn something.  One thing I can take from my pasta experience is that I was able to maintain a low stress level throughout the process (75% credit to drinking wine).  However, cooking stresses me out.  And one of the things I want to get out of this bucket list experience is to reduce the stress of cooking by understanding and knowing how to do it.   Another thing I can take away is that I was able to improvise and make the second batch better than the first.  I'm a pretty smart cat so I should be able to use my brain to get through a cooking malfunction.  I'll call that a win-win.  Bonus in that everyone liked the food!  

The act of pasta making requires an entire day so the next time will have to take some planning (definitely a good Saturday night meal).  This gal can't whip up homemade pasta after 8+ hours at work.  I am looking forward to my future tomato garden in the spring/summer so I can experiment with homemade pasta sauce for my homemade noodles.  

Next blog post will be bucket list #2.  I am super excited for our trip and cannot wait to share the experience with everyone. 

XOXO, 

Abby