Pasta Pronto Procedure

Before Ann and I part ways for the summer, we figured we get in one last blog post from one of our cooking adventures over the past week. For Christmas, Ann got a pasta maker and so we've used it a couple times to make a fresh and delicious dinner. One of those times was a week ago Saturday.

In celebration of (the end of) spring, and the fact that my neighbor and one of our loyal readers, Liz, had a jar of tomato sauce she needed to use, we made spinach pasta with fresh greens and asparagus from the farmers' market. We also made some plain white pasta to make sure we had enough for everyone, and we had parmesan cheese and fresh basil from the plant growing in my window with which to garnish.

Making pasta is surprisingly easy. With some slight adjustments we made while cooking, here are the recipes we used: plain pasta & spinach pasta. Ann and I both love cookbooks, especially ones with photos, but I don't know how we'd ever cook if it weren't for recipes we find on the internet. In the spinach pasta we used organic frozen spinach for the sake of convenience.

Here is the set-up from the first time Ann made pasta:

Kneading the dough:

Ann turned into a scary green monster from the sticky spinach dough:

Putting pasta through the machine:

Some of the spinach dough got stuck in the machine so I had to get it out with a knife between each run-through. I eventually figured out that the key to getting the spinach pasta sliced successfully was speed--if you turn the crank fast enough, the dough doesn't have a chance to get stuck and bunch up.

Sarah sautéed the vegetables.

We timed it just right so that all the different veggies turned out perfectly cooked!

Liz holding some freshly sliced pasta:
Green & white pasta hanging on a ski-pole, waiting to be boiled:

The finished product. Delicious!

On that note, I hope everyone has a wonderful summer. We may, at times, have updates (I might update about pizza-making last Wednesday before I leave school). Otherwise, The Second Davis Lounge will be back in September.

Until then...Your friendly bloggers