the freshest pasta you've ever seen

Earlier this week I decided my cooking exploits for tonight were going to involve homemade pasta--I've gotten spoiled by one of my coworkers, who used to work for Loring Pasta Bar, and who makes fresh pasta pretty regularly in our cooking classes. Generally I'm not much of a pasta person, but I pretty much always stuff my face when he makes it.

I wanted to keep the sauce/toppings/other flavors simple so the flavor of the dough could come through. Yesterday afternoon I was downtown and there was a lady on Nicollet Mall with a a vegetable stand. I picked up a ridiculous quantity of green beans from her, so naturally I had to use up some of those.

The dough:

Flour (AP and semolina), extra virgin olive oil, eggs, salt

The embellishment:

Green beans, olive oil, garlic, almonds, Asiago, lemon, rosemary

I used Bittman for the dough recipe (page 156 of the soft cover). Mixed it in a bowl the way I was taught, stirring together the flour and salt, making a well, and adding the eggs and olive oil before combining and kneading everything.

Pasta dough!

One of my first days at my job I helped said coworker and one other person mix and cut pasta dough for a class. It was slightly false advertising because that is definitely not how I spend my time there now (sweeping behind the ovens seems to happen a lot more frequently...), but I can forgive them because I constantly get to reap the benefits of seeing and tasting other people's incredible cooking! We have a pasta machine, which makes nice perfect fettuccine-like strips, I used a rolling pin and pizza slicer. All about the rustic aesthetic, right?

The pile of pasta, before cooking!

That gets tossed into a big stock pot full of boiling water, and has to cook for literally about two minutes before it's done. Bam, pasta.

The green beans I cooked with garlic, salt, and pepper, then added chopped almonds, lemon zest, fresh rosemary and shredded Asiago to, as well as an extra pour of olive oil. Fresh basil would have been really nice instead of the rosemary, but I was using what I had around.

I absolutely loved this. It was really, really good. I wish homemade pasta weren't so labor-intensive because I could eat this always. I suppose I appreciate it more for that!