Fresh pasta is a staple in the Italian kitchen, and with good reason! It’s very quick and easy to make, it’s dirt cheap, filling, and incredibly delicious. It is also superior to anything you’ll ever find in the stores, and SO worth the 5 minutes it takes to make.
And just like with gnocchi, people will try to fancy the shit outta their recipe to stand out in the blogosphere, using only egg yolks, pink fucking Himalaya salt and whatnot. I will simply quote from our ultimate gnocchi recipe here:
You will find other recipes with 2 or 3 or even 4 egg yolks, just as with pasta. Excuse my fucking French (no, not really), but unless you have a specific plan to use those four egg whites, they end up as discard, and that’s just fucking wasteful.
Do you REALLY think an Italian Nonna would allow such blatant disregard for perfectly good ingrediens? NO! This tiny, wrinkly 45 kg fierce creature would slap you harder than a grown man on steroids and tell you off!
Fresh pasta is as simple as this:
- 90-100 g flour + 1 whole egg per person
Mix well to combine, and knead for a few minutes until you have a firm, cohesive dough. Flip a bowl over the dough and let bench rest for minimum 30 minutes for the gluten to relax before shaping. 2-3 hours is ok too if that suits your schedule better.
We use a manual Marcato Atlas 150 to roll our pasta, and we’re super happy with it. Most definitely worth the money, should you be in the market for one.
Now, let’s talk about the details.
The “1 egg + 100 g flour per person” rule is if pasta is the bulk of what you eat, like in a pasta carbonara, tortellini etc. If you have a heavy meat based sauce, like a Bolognese for example, 50-75% would be sufficient.
So with Bolognese for 4 people, I would likely use 3 eggs and 300g flour. That is, unless we’re talking about 4 starving sailors ready to wolf down the entire life raft raw if they don’t get food NOW. Then I’d go for the 1 egg + 100 g flour rule.
The kind of flour you use will have a tremendous impact on the flavor and especially texture of your pasta. I usually prefer a equal mix of regular wheat flour and semola.
100 % regular wheat flour will result in a very soft and tender pasta suitable for sea food, while the 100 % semola will result in a very firm, “al dente” pasta, more suitable for robust and heavy dishes like Bolognese. Feel free to experiment with different mixes to get different textures.
Pasta needs a lot of salt to really be tasty AF. When I’m land based, I add fine sea salt directly to the dough. 3 g salt per serving. If I’m out sailing offshore or I know the sea water is high quality, I drop salting the dough and simply cook the pasta in pure sea water.
Finally, head over to the most magnificent YouTube channel about pasta https://www.youtube.com/user/pastagrannies
