Making Fresh Pasta

Making fresh pasta is not hard,
but it does take some time.
After mixing the dough and dividing it into balls
it is left to rest and rise for 10 minutes,
and then it is flattened into sheets.
First it is patted into a flattish square,
and then fed through the rollers of the pasta machine:

It has to go through ten times.
Each time the rollers are re-set from 10 to 9 to 8 and so on down to 1,
making the distance between the rollers smaller,
and the pasta is rolled out in thinner and thinner sheets.

After that, the pasta can be cut--
in rounds with filling in between, for ravioli,
or in long strips for fettucine.
We folded the pasta sheets and then cut them.

Here are the fresh pasta 'heaps' of linguine
ready to go into the boiling salted water.
It cooks for 3 minutes, and then gets taken out and put in the sauce.

Nando, our chef instructor,
says to always put the pasta in the sauce
(not the sauce on the pasta)
because this way the pasta absorbs the sauce flavors better.
Today's pasta was green with pureed parsley,
and the sauce was a clam and sauteed vegetable sauce....
YUM!