UPDATE (July 24, 2014): It’s that time of year again when the garden is producing more basil and tomatoes than one can possibly eat! This week we received a bag of fresh basil in our CSA and I wanted to try an experiment. If I added basil to my Cuisinart when I was mixing my pasta dough together, could I make delicious basil pasta? The results of my experiment were a resounding success. If you add about 1 cup (mine was actually 1 sandwich baggie worth) of basil in with the flour and salt before you add your eggs, then the flour helps keep the basil from mushing up while its being chopped. One your basil is chopped and incorporated into your flour, then add your eggs. Because of the extra moisture in the basil, I did not need to add any additional water after my eggs. We served our basil pasta with fresh tomatoes and Parmesan cheese. Simple. Easy. Perfect dinner during these hot summer months!
There’s a quote from one of my favorite movies, Kung Fu Panda, “Quit, don’t quit? Noodles, don’t noodles? You are too concerned about what was and what will be. There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.” I spent years trying to making fresh pasta by hand in our tiny apartment kitchen in Davis, California. It was a really small studio apartment and the things I choose to cook were beyond the capability of our kitchenette. There’s a famous Italian proverb, “La cucina piccola fal la casa grande (A small kitchen makes the house big)”. It’s amazing the things we were able to create in our kitchen.
I love pasta and once you’ve had fresh pasta everything else tastes nasty. I decided that I had to learn to make noodles effectively in my tiny kitchen that didn’t involve buying a ton of kitchen equipment. Our apartment was already cramped enough. I tried futzing with the recipe. Failed. I tried making dough in our KitchenAid mixer. Really failed. I don’t know why or how I decided to make dough in our Cuisinart. Success.
The only kitchen equipment I finally broke down and purchased was the KitchenAid pasta roller and spaghetti and fettucine cutters. In reality, I didn’t have enough kitchen counter space to actually roll out the dough. Our KitchenAid actually sat in our living room. Yup, our kitchen was that small. The KitchenAid pasta roller and cutters have been by far one of the best kitchen purchases I’ve ever made. Now when I don’t feel like cooking or when it’s a 1000 degrees outside and I don’t want to turn on my stove, I can whip up a recipe of fresh pasta and it cooks in no time flat. If you have fresh or canned tomatoes around, bacon, and herbs, you’ve got yourself a really lovely dinner.
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