“Life is a combination of magic and pasta.”

– Frederico Fellini

What a wise man. We couldn’t agree more.

In honor of National Pasta Day on Tuesday (October 17th), we thought we’d share one of our favorite family dinners. We may not be Italian, but we make some mean spaghetti and meatballs… from scratch!

When Ashley returned from living in Italy for a semester during college, she was inspired to try her hand at making fresh homemade pasta. And as Graham’s (remember, we love to eat), we fully supported this decision. What kind of family would we be if we didn’t support each other’s hobby’s? And I mean I guess if we had to taste-test some fresh pasta along the way, we were willing to carry the burden of that role.

Not only did she perfect the papa joe noodle, she also perfected her secret spaghetti sauce (she won’t even share the recipe with us!).

While we all learned how to make the noodles completely by hand (maybe we’ll save that for another post), we have accelerated the process with Ashley’s handy dandy KitchenAid pasta attachment. Trust me, it’s still homemade (you’ll see how next). But with the help of these tools we get to slurp down our pasta just that much sooner.

In case you want to give it a try (trust me, you do), I’m here to walk you through the process.

 

INGREDIENTS

4 large eggs

2 tbs water

1 tbs olive oil

2 cups flour

1 1/3 cups semolina flour

Pinch of salt

 

DIRECTIONS

*Recipe adapted from the KitchenAid Semolina Egg Pasta recipe.

1. Start by boiling a big pot of water. Add a splash of olive oil and a pinch of salt to keep the noodles from sticking together.

2. Combine the eggs, water, oil, flours and salt in a mixing bowl. Beat (with a flat beater) on speed 2 for 30 seconds.

3. Replace the flat beater for a dough hook, turn to speed 2 and kneed for 2 minutes. Then hand kneed the dough for an additional 1-2 minutes.

4. Divide the dough into 8 pieces. Roll each piece out until about 1/2 inch thick.

5. Attach the Pasta Sheet Roller to the KitchenAid. Turn to setting 1 for a papa joe style noodle (our favorite!). Insert pieces one by one through the sheet roller attachment. After doing so, you should have a long, thin piece of dough. If you find that the dough gets a bit crumbly after running it through the roller, brush the dough with a little (I repeat little) bit of water and run it through the roller again.

6. Once you’ve run all 8 pieces through the roller, replace the roller with the Pasta Cutter attachment (there is only one speed). Run each long, thin piece of dough through the cutter and place immediately in the boiling water.

7. Stir the noodles regularly until they are al dente. Strain and cover with homemade sauce. We were lucky enough to insert Momma G’s homemade meatballs (we can’t give away all our family secrets!).

8. Have yourself a feast. We sure did.

Whether you make it by hand or open a package of noodles and a jar of sauce, we hope you’ll celebrate this very important national holiday this week. Just remember… wear your stretch pants.

Ciao!

Hayley

*Photo cred: Ashley and Abigail