Written By Jessica Brown People ask me what my favorite food is nearly every time that I mention I am a nutrition major. Usually they expect something fancy, like a mango kale smoothie, but nonetheless the only thing that truly comes to mind is pasta. Not the boxed kind or the type you find in the Walmart freezer, but the kind my grandmother made completely from scratch with love, care, and nostalgia. I come from a pure Italian family where from-scratch cooking with wholesome ingredients is essentially cherished in the kitchen. The food we make together, including our homemade spaghetti and ravioli, bring us closer and help us value or appreciate our ancestor’s history. When I think of this pasta dish, I reminisce about sitting at the dinner table with my brothers. There would be flour everywhere, helping our sticky hands knead the dough, the smell of scrumptious red tomato sauce cooking on the stove and listening to my grandma hum some of her favorite Italian songs that brought her back to her childhood. While some may think, “it's just pasta, it’s not that deep” to my family, it really is that deep. Connecting culture to food is incredible. It gives the food you eat a new importance and makes you feel at home even when you are miles away. If you’re Italian, you may know how unimportant measurement techniques are in cooking. In fact, my grandma literally would ban the use of measuring cups and tablespoons while dinner was being cooked. Our family pasta recipe is made by feel while we mix and knead the dough. If it is too soft, we add more flour. Too hard? Just add more water. The beauty about Italian cooking is that you do not need to be perfect; if you go by taste and feel you will succeed in the end. Now, ready for the recipe?
And that is about it. To start, grab a large bowl and pour in approximately 3 cups of flour to start. Mix in approximately 1 tbsp of salt. Then add the egg along with some water; you do not want to pour in too much at first so start with ½ cup. Mix together. Gradually stir in more as it thickens up and the gluten forms. You are looking for a tough consistency similar to that of a pie crust, but not as wet. Once the right consistency of the dough has been reached you are ready to form your pasta shape. If you have a kitchen aid mixer you can use the pasta attachment. But if you're a college student like me, you may want to just use the rolling pin and a knife. Roll the dough until it is about the thickness of a dime then cut to your desired width. For fettuccini, cut about ½ a centimeter and linguini would be about 1 whole centimeter.
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November 2019
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