“Touching on the senses” Cooking Class
Making fresh pasta with the visually impaired local community.
Italian cuisine stimulates the senses of taste, smell, and touch. Making pasta is an art that mainly relies on your touch; while you can follow the recipe, you must feel the dough in your hands before cutting your tagliatelle, pappardelle, or whatever size you prefer.
We @BellaVia with the GO See Foundation at Idler’s Home hosted a fantastic session, we made fresh pasta.
Glad to share with you the recipe and a few tips.
Pasta fresca all’uovo (Fresh Egg Pasta)
Ingredients:
Eggs 4 - (at least 2.5oz - 70 g each) as organic as possible
Flour 00 3 ½ cups (400 g)
Preparation:
To make the fresh dough, pour a little less than 3 cups (400 g) of flour into a mixing bowl (keep a bit aside to add if necessary) or directly onto a wooden pastry board for its roughness. Make a hole in the center and add the whole eggs, stirring with a fork as you begin to mix in the flour.
Once the liquid part has been absorbed, start kneading by hand: transfer to the pastry board or a wooden surface and knead there for about 10 minutes, with the palm and vigorously, pulling it in all directions but taking care not to tear it. Once the dough is smooth, wrap it in the plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes.
Then you can get back to work on the dough. Cut a piece with the pastry cutter, keeping the rest wrapped in plastic wrap to prevent it from drying out. Flour the pasta and pull it with the sheet maker at maximum thickness, passing the dough between the rollers to obtain a thick first sheet, fold the two edges of the sheet towards the center, then divide it into two parts so that it can be handled more easily, gradually decreasing to the thinnest thickness until it reaches the final thickness. At this point, your fresh egg pasta is ready, and you can shape it however you like.
Tips:
Use a wooden surface: the roughness of the wood is more suitable than a simple smooth surface.
Flour the worktop: this way the pasta will not stick to the surface.
If you need to make lasagna, tagliatelle, tagliolini, pappardelle or quadrucci, it is preferable to dry the sheets spread with semolina a few minutes each side before folding them into a flat roll.
If you do not have a sheet maker, you can roll out the fresh pasta with a long rolling pin! It will take some patience and energy, but it’s fun.
Enjoy!
