For weeks now, I’ve been dying to get my hands into a mound of semolina – all I want in life, is to make a batch of handmade pasta. I imagine my hands magically transforming the fine grains into a soft mound of dough and then turning that dough into beautiful strips of deliciousness. There’s always been something amazing about handmade pasta, but just imagine if that pasta came from your own hands.

This vision was inspired by an ancient episode of one Rachel Ray’s shows. Back in the day, I devoured everything on the Food Network and Rachel was the new girl, the girl next door, and the one to watch, and I watched religiously. I can’t tell you which show it was but if I had to guess I’d say it was probably $40 a Day. I might not remember the show, but this particular segment is burned in my mind, like a sacred memory.

Rachel was visiting a restaurant in a small Italian village (though it’s entirely possible she was actually in a small Italian-American restaurant somewhere in the Northeast). She ordered her meal on screen and then snuck us into the kitchen to give us a behind-the-scenes look at how her pasta was being made.

The Italian cook was a no fuss type of woman. She quickly tossed a mound of flour onto a table, created a small well, dropped in a couple of eggs, punctured the yolks, and swiftly and effortlessly pulled small bits of flour into the egg mixture until it magically formed into mound of dough.

Anyone who has ever devoured cooking shows or YouTube videos has probably seen this a dozen times. Hell, I watched three of those videos before writing this post. It’s always mesmerizing to me, but there was something about this woman, her speed and the ease with which she turned a couple of ingredients into a soft, round, mound of dough, that was special, but the most magical part was yet to come.

This no-nonsense woman, who I will refer to as the magic pasta woman, rolled her ball of dough to the desired thickness and then … she grabbed an ordinary-looking butter knife and proceeded to cut wide strips which she immediately tossed into boiling water. Pasta made, pasta cooked. Moments later, this beautiful, effortlessly made, hand-made pasta, was plated with the sauce du jour. Voila! Dinner was ready. It was just that easy.

I’m fully aware that TV-editing-magic is always a factor, especially on cooking programs, but I want to believe in this fantasy that Rachel Ray and the magic pasta woman sold me. The problem is that there were two things that bothered me. First, I was always under the impression that dough had to rest in order to develop and be workable. There was no resting period, at least not one that I saw. The other thing is I was under the impression that pasta had to be dried in order to be used. Not fully dried, like boxed pasta, but I thought it needed some airtime.

I’m not sure if the producers and editors edited these parts out to keep the segment moving, to make it sexier, or if in fact, you can make pasta that quickly. I now have this fantasy that fresh pasta can be made, rolled, cut, and cooked in the time it takes to watch a short YouTube Video.

Okay, I’m wiling to humor that it will take longer than a short YouTube video, but I’m still hoping it will take no more than 20 minutes.  Okay, so it will take however long it takes, but the idea of making handmade pasta and eating it within an hour or so, is beyond desirable and so off I go to test various recipes, resting the dough, not resting the dough, hanging the pasta to dry, chucking it straight into the pot…

Here goes nothing, (but a mound of semolina/flour and a couple-few eggs). Wish me luck!

Test One: [Made with Course Semolina]

So last night, I just went for it, using my memory as my cookbook. In my mind, I was watching that magic pasta woman and was following along with her magical moves.

I started by pouring a cup of (rather course) semolina onto my work surface and added a couple of refrigerator-cold eggs and I started mixing.

I realized almost immediately, that I had done this experiment before. The memories came surging back. Last time, I had used a mound of white flour, and refrigerator-cold eggs. I made the little mound, complete with well and when I added the eggs, they just fit in that space. When I started to break the eggs and mix the flour in, the whites of the eggs flowed out of my little volcano reminding me of those science experiments that we always envied in elementary school, difference being those volcanoes had an impressive foam of lava, and mine was more of a sad dripping escape of liquid egg. As I chased my egg-whites with my fork, I made a second attempt to elegantly mix my flour into my egg, and a third attempt, and a fourth attempt, and …eventually I abandoned my fork and used my hands. This memory matched my current experience exactly.

Lesson one: When they say make a deep well, they mean, make it WIDE and DEEP. In other words, make it really big so you have space to manipulate the eggs.

Lesson two: Did I mention that using any old semolina isn’t going to do the trick? Make sure it’s super fine semolina.

Lesson three: If you add a cup of white flour, you can somewhat salvage your dough [See Test Two]

Test Two [aka Test One with a cup of white flour]

My course semolina and white flour mixture came together fairly well. Since I was determined to follow the magic pasta lady’s technique, I decided to just start rolling. Yup, no extra kneading, no developing of glutens to make it nice and elastic, no nothing, just rolling.

It rolled out with a bit of effort but not so much that I felt like abandoning my experiment. That magic pasta lady didn’t get to where she is without learning a few lessons, and I stubbornly insist on learning my lessons the hard way. After rolling out a large sheet, I decided to cut it into four pieces and work on them one by one.

The smaller pieces were obviously much easier to roll out. I rolled them as thin as I could, which frankly wasn’t thin enough for my liking (I like my pasta fine and thin, can anyone say angel-hair pasta?).

Lesson Four: If you like your pasta thin and fine, take the time to roll it out that way.

My plan for this pasta was to make two batches. The first batch would be cut in a “rustic” manner. The magic pasta lady might have had nice looking noodles, but I have no delusions that my lines will be as straight. “Rustic” it is. The second batch would be perfect strings of spaghetti. How does a girl who is only capable of making “rustic” strands of pasta, make a batch of perfect spaghetti? Said girl, bought a magic tool at Sur La Table. That’s right, a gadget I don’t need and will surely never use again. The gadget is known as the Eppicotispai Spaghetti Pasta Cutter. For a mere $8.00 plus tax, you too could own this tool that will make you a magical pasta lady, or it would, if only it worked.

Lesson Five: Don’t let your desire to be a magical pasta lady delude you into thinking that a magical tool that costs $8 will turn you into a magical pasta lady. It won’t.

Eppicotispai Spaghetti Pasta Cutter: First Impression

The tool is no doubt, cool (looking). This small rolling pin is marked with grooves that are the width of a strand of spaghetti. The idea is, you roll out a rectangular sheet of pasta, flour it, and then roll this Spaghetti Pasta Cutter over the sheet, leaving you with perfect strands of spaghetti. Or at least that’s how I imagined using it. [The tool comes with no instructions].

Wanna hear something funny? When I was at Sur La Table, I spied the spaghetti cutter and it’s sisters, the fettuccini cutter, the tagliatelle cutter, and the pappardelle cutter, but I didn’t want any of those. I wanted the angel-hair pasta cutter, which doesn’t exist [at least not by this brand]. After using the spaghetti tool, I understand why.

Since the tool comes with no directions [in the package or on the box] you are left to your own devices. My assumption is that you roll your dough to the desired thickness, and then roll the spaghetti tool over the dough. The tool is carved with grooves and ridges that are the depth and width of spaghetti, in the case of the tools that make wider noodles the grooves are flatter and the ridges are spread further apart. The problem here, at least with the spaghetti tool is that those grooves are impossibly small, and the ridges aren’t particularly sharp. In spite of the pressure I exerted on the tool, it just wouldn’t cut the pasta, nor would it release the pasta. The only way to remove the pasta from the cutter was…wait for it…to use a knife. Like, a butter knife. Like, the same kind of butter knife, the magical pasta woman uses to cut her pasta. Ironic, isn’t it?

I wasn’t ready to write this tool off. I realized that if a rolling pin required flour to roll out pasta, then a ridged/grooved pin would likely require flour too but the ridges are impossibly small so I added a bit more flour to the pasta sheets. Didn’t help. Then I just went for it and I floured the tool. Didn’t work. I considered oiling it, but I felt it would require copious amounts of oil, and that just didn’t feel right to me. First of all, I have a problem using that much oil, it feels like a waste. Second, I have no desire to wash an unfinished, hand-wash-only, wooden tool, doused in oil, that has dozens of fine grooves in it. How would you ever properly wash it? Seems like a lot of work, I have no love for washing dishes. In the end, I made two batches of pasta, One where I folded up the pasta  and cut it with a knife [yup, that good old butter knife] yielding long, wide, ribbons of pasta and the other batch was just a sad attempt at making the tool work. I used the tool to mark the sheets as best I could [even that was a challenge] and used a knife to cut along those lines [can you say nightmare?) Needless to say, that second batch was much more “rustic” looking than the first.

Lesson Six: There’s a reason the magical pasta woman uses a knife. Just use a damn knife. No magic pasta tools necessary.

Lesson Seven: If the lady at Sur La Table has a funny expression on her face when you ask her if there’s an angel hair version of the tool, take that as a hint about the spaghetti tool. She might just be trying to tell you something, without telling you something.

Since I knew the pasta was going to be meh, I didn’t bother to cook it right away. And since I don’t have a pasta rack, I decided to lightly dust the pasta with flour and spread out on plates to dry. My delusions of pasta making grandeur were put into check when my not-so-magical spaghetti-cutting wand turned out to be a dud and that’s okay. So far, it’s been a great learning experience.

Boiling the Pasta

I left the pasta to dry overnight. It dried fairly well for a batch that was merely spread out on a plate. I need to look into the best way to store this pasta. Is it to refrigerate immediately? It is to dry it on racks like we always see people doing? My intention was to cook it and eat it so I didn’t bother to think that far.

Note to Self:  Conduct far more in-depth research on pasta making for people who don’t possess magic pasta-making skills.

And while I’m at it:  Research how best to store said pasta if you don’t cook it right away.

The pasta, being of a thicker consistency and partially dried, took quite a bit longer to cook than fresh pasta, which tends to cook in a flash. The flavor was pretty good. I had salted the pasta and pasta water well and I think the semolina gave it a nicer flavor than the flour-only batch I had made ages ago. The major issue was the texture and the thickness. The thickness frankly, is a personal issue. I’ve purchased thicker pasta and had the same reaction to it. It takes longer to cook, and frankly, I just don’t love the taste of it. But that’s a lesson for me and me alone. The texture is the problem I need to fix. This brings me to the point I made earlier. I felt that two things were missing from the Rachel Ray segment. One, I felt that the dough needed to be worked more. I really only worked it long enough to incorporate the ingredients and not much longer. I’m certain that this was a mistake. I also felt like the dough needed to rest a bit.

Last night, after my pasta experiment, I watched a couple of videos that were more explicit in their instruction than ones I’ve seen in the past, which are more food-porn in nature. In both cases, they worked the dough. In both cases they rested the dough. One YouTuber, wrapped his dough, and refrigerated it for a half an hour before rolling it and cutting it. The other YouTuber, wrapped her dough and let it rest on the counter for an hour, before rolling and cutting. Those feel like two different ways to go and though I’d like to try them both, my gut tells me that the men and women of Italy who made pasta back in the day, did it without benefit of a refrigerator [the argument could be made that ALL food the world over was made without benefit of a refrigerator but I’m still going to go this route].

My next pasta-making attempt will undoubtedly be better than what I just made. The semolina will be finer, much finer, and the dough will be worked and rested. Hell, if I’m feeling up to it, I may even give the spaghetti cutter one more go, but that remains to be seen.

Even though I didn’t fulfill my dreams of making and eating handmade pasta within 15 minutes, I enjoyed the process. All I lost was a couple of eggs and some flour.I’m looking forward to making that next batch, and replacing that silly tool with a good old-fashioned butter knife. When I finally do have success, I promise to share my discoveries with you. Until then, all I can say is, please don’t buy any magical-unfinished wood-spaghetti cutting tools. At least not the one I tried. Just embrace the butter knife.