Homemade pasta worth the effort, even if it took all day and multiple tries

Cooking can be a real adventure.

I took one day off from the monstrous job of cleaning out my tiny office to fix my husband a good dinner for his birthday. He requested Italian. I’ve made the spaghetti sauce he likes a hundred times and he loves it so that part was easy. Then, since I had the time, I decided to make homemade pasta, spaghetti to be exact. I’ve done this several times with my hand crank pasta maker, but I’ve never made it by myself. It’s been with a teacher in Italy or at home with my friend Cheryl. We were wildly successful. By myself, not so much.

Dough and I don’t get along. Pie dough, pizza dough and pasta dough present a challenge I have never conquered. But I went into this birthday pasta making with a positive attitude.

First, the fun part. I made the circle of flour, then cracked the eggs in the middle then, gently and slowly added the ring of flour into the eggs and finally worked into a ball. So far so good.

But the ball that looked so smooth and perfect in the picture with the recipe, didn’t look like the one stuck on my palm. More flour. Better, so I rolled it out as thin as I could. But it was stuck down. More flour. Thought it would work but, noooooo. It stuck and gummed up the pasta machine as I tried to crank it through, a step that is supposed to make it very thin.

Back to the floured board. I made it into a ball again for try number two. Admittedly at this point the package of American Beauty spaghetti in the pantry was looking better by the minute.

I didn’t want to give up because, believe it or not, homemade pasta is a lot better than the dried stuff you buy. The second try was better, but it still had just too much stickiness to it. On this attempt as I was cranking the pasta maker, the handle slipped off.

I dropped it and it landed on my bare foot. The way I hopped around the kitchen would put the Easter Bunny to shame. Who knew you should wear steel-toe boots to make pasta?

With determination, I thought ‘the third time is a charm.’ Of course by this time the dough, was as my mom would say, “over-worked.”

I was talking to the dough explaining I was the one overworked with a sweat mustache to prove it. I told that big wad of dough if it didn’t want to be lobbed into the garbage it had better cooperate this time. Yes, I talked to the dough.

Anyway, I worked it some more. When I rolled it out it would stay that way for one second then shrink back to a much smaller size. This is when I picked it up with both hands, stretched it and thought seriously about tossing it in the air like pizza dough. Instead I stretched it, ran around the kitchen island, put it in the machine and cranked. It worked! I fed it through several times making it thinner each time.

Then came the real test — putting it through on the spaghetti setting. It wasn’t perfect, but I managed to come out with two good-size helpings. And believe it or not, the dinner turned out great even though what should have taken an hour or two took most of the day. At least the birthday guy was very appreciative.

Next time you’re in an Italian restaurant, which I hope is in the not-too-distant future, and the menu says “homemade” or “handmade” pasta, order it. Just know they didn’t work as hard making it as I did. And they wisely don’t cook barefooted.

Stay well.