Pasta Party

Anthony's parents gave us a pasta machine for Christmas, and on Saturday we invited them round to try out the new acquisition.

While the guys hung out in the lounge playing with our Christmas present to Mike (a Wii driving game), Marian and I experimented with pasta in the kitchen. The first step was to make the dough, using extra-fine flour, eggs, salt, and a little olive oil. I made three batches of it, each extremely dense and requiring 8 minutes of kneading, so my arms were pretty tired by the end of it. After letting it rest in the fridge for a little while, we started the process of rolling it out, first by hand, so it would fit into the machine:

The hardest part was getting the dough through the machine's widest setting:

But after that, the narrower settings were really easy:

The strip of dough grew very long:

Very, very long, in fact. This is just one the three batches:

Once it was as thin as we wanted, we started feeding it through the cutters. This part was so cool:

We made linguine (left), spaghetti (center), and ravioli (right):

Then we cooked it and added sauces. Top to bottom: mushroom ravioli (we put the extra filling on top); spaghetti with white wine, parma ham, and artichoke hearts; linguine with an alfredo sauce; and spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce, served with parmesan and basil chiffonade.

The final feast:

It was all delicious. And the funny thing was, everybody had a different favourite. Mike liked the ravioli, Marian liked the spaghetti with tomato sauce, Anthony liked the alfredo, and I liked the parma ham with artichokes. The crowning glory of the meal was an exquisite Spanish cabernet sauvignon, a gift from some wine-collecting friends.

After all this, we played Mahjong and Alhambra and enjoyed chocolate souffle. Thank you, Mike and Marian, for a really fun evening and the wonderful Christmas present!