No Photographic Evidence...Sorry

Someday I will post photos of pasta-making. This weekend's foray was impressive, but certainly not graceful.

I've made pasta before using a rolling pin and knife, but since Christmas the pasta maker that attaches to my mixer has been taunting me from the cabinet. After all, on the Food Network, pasta-making is nothing: slap the egg and water into the flour, commercial break, there's a nice, smooth dough, knead it around, commercial break, now it's sliding smoothly through the pasta machine and Presto! Chango! Fettucine!

Need I say it's not all that simple?

There I was surrounded by Joy of Cooking, the pasta machine manual and Lidya's Kitchen cookbook advising me what to do, and the first quarter-batch looking like a rat had gnawed on it. I think at some point Joe, my youngest son, started pounding it into the machine, laughing maniacally.

He finally gave up and left the kitchen saying, "Break out the San Giorgio, Mom."

Undaunted, I shut all the books and let The Force take over.

And that's my advice to you. Once you have a general recipe, use The Force and your own common sense.

The last three quarter-batches should have been filmed for Food Network -- or at least for Domestic Derring-Do. And if, at that point, I'd have had the energy to climb the stairs to get the camera you would now be seeing pictures of waves of fettucine pouring fluidly from my pasta machine and me with a serene smile on my face. You would see a big photo of steaming pasta with a simple tomato sauce and husband and brother with happy faces. I would be writing about how simple it is to produce a bowl of pasta and how I do it all the time: Presto! Chango!

I aspire to get to that point where I can be smug about pasta-making ("You mean you buy boxed pasta? What's wrong with you?").