By Christine Salins.
Making pasta by hand at home is surprisingly easy … and it’s a lot of fun. Lucy Vaserfirer shows just how much fun in The Ultimate Pasta Machine Cookbook (Harvard Common, $35).
With expert wisdom and a gentle, step-by-step approach, she shows how to make perfect pasta and noodles in all kinds of shapes and flavours. The book covers both manual and electric machines, as well as stand-mixer pasta attachments.
Anyone who has tasted handmade pasta will agree it tastes so much better than store-bought pasta. Regardless of shape, store-bought pasta tends to come in a single bland and rather unexciting flavour. In making it at home, you can enjoy dozens of different flavours, as this inventive book shows.
The author is a chef who runs a blog called Hungry Cravings that aims to demystify complex cooking and baking techniques and offer delicious, foolproof recipes. She has previously written books on searing, marinating, and cast-iron cooking.
Similarly, in this one, she takes the methods from master chefs and translates them into simple, step-by-step instructions, showing the reader how easy it is to use a sheeter, extruder, and cavatelli maker to make a huge range of pasta shapes, including many you won’t see in stores.
She shows how to make purees, using a blender or a mixing bowl, that can be turned into all sorts of flavoured pastas, from tomato or spinach to pasta flavoured with herbs like basil or chives, spices like pepper or saffron, and other flavours, such as beetroot, sweet potato, corn, and even chocolate.
She includes the most common types of pasta – durum and semolina – as well as buckwheat and ancient-grain pastas. She also shows how to make Asian noodles such as udon, soba and ramen. As well as lots of clever tips and tricks, there are recipes for fillings for ravioli, tortellini and other stuffed pastas, as well as a feast of sauces for finished pasta dishes.
The recipe here uses semolina spaghetti. We’ve omitted the instructions for making the pasta – it’s best to consult the book for that – and even the author admits that she occasionally uses store-bought pasta to whip up this recipe on busy weeknights.
Spaghetti with quick cherry tomato sauce and fresh mozzarella
Serves 4 generously
salt
3 tablespoons (45 ml) extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving
4 cloves garlic, minced
Generous pinch red chilli flakes
800g yellow, orange, and red cherry tomatoes
1 recipe fresh Semolina Spaghetti or other sheeted or extruded pasta
1 large handful basil leaves, torn if large
Freshly ground black pepper
225g fresh mozzarella pearls or diced bocconcini, drained and at room temperature
Freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, for serving
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt generously.
Heat a large, heavy skillet over medium-low heat until hot. Add the olive oil and swirl to coat the inside of the pan. Add the garlic and chilli flakes and sauté until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes and cook, and stirring frequently, until they burst and their juices thicken, about 14 minutes. Help the tomatoes along by piercing them and smashing them lightly using a fork. This will also keep the splatter down from exploding tomatoes.
While the sauce finishes thickening, add the pasta to the boiling water and boil, stirring frequently, until nearly al dente.
To finish the dish, stir the basil into the sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Reserve a ladleful of the pasta cooking water. Working quickly, drain the pasta, transfer it to the skillet with sauce, and toss gently to coat, thinning with reserved pasta water as desired. Remove from the heat and serve immediately topped with the mozzarella, a generous drizzle of olive oil, and plenty of grated Parmigiano.
Recipe and image from The Ultimate Pasta Machine Cookbook by Lucy Vaserfirer, photography by Lucy Vaserfirer. Published by Harvard Common Press, RRP $35.00.
