Fresh Pasta & Sauce

Have I mentioned that I hate my kitchen? Well, I do. It is incredibly frustrating to have to cook, from scratch, in a Barbie kitchen. I have all these cool tools and absolutely no where to store them. When we purchased this home we were aware that the kitchen was small. But at that time I was not really into cooking. Things have changed a lot in the past 4 years. When I retire, my house can be small, but it will need to have a huge kitchen. With lots of counter space and a large pantry. Until then I'll have to make do with what I have. Monday is always "bread baking day". I also wanted to use up the ripe tomatoes from my garden and play with the pasta maker. First up, the tomatoes. I only had 6 to 8 of them, so could not make a very large batch of sauce. I blanched them, removed the skins, and chopped them in the food processor.


Then I put them in a pan with some seasonings and simmered them for a bit. The resulting sauce was delicious. I decided to freeze it so I could share it with the rest of the family at a later date.


Next up? Pasta. I need to start taking full advantage of my KitchenAid. I've never really made pasta, before, so was a little reluctant. But here goes. I mixed up a batch of dough and let it rest. Yes, it's very yellow. Fresh, home grown eggs have dark orange yolks.


Next I attached the pasta roller to Gladys.


I rolled out the sheets of pasta and placed them on the drying rack.


Then cut them all into spaghetti.


My dough was a tad too wet, so next time I will use one less egg. The sticky dough made it hard to separate the strands of spaghetti. But it turned out fine and I enjoyed a nice bowl of pasta with some of my home made pesto.


I froze the remaining uncooked pasta. We'll see how that works. If it is successful I will make and freeze larger batches.