Pike Place Market + Homemade Pasta

Still in Seattle. Still loving it. Still cooking.

Yesterday we had some yummy crepes for brunch, headed to Pike Place Market to do a little shopping, and then spent the rest of the day in the kitchen prepping for a a big dinner party. Or a little dinner party where 5'5" was the maximum height of about 90% of the attendees. The theme was Little Italy - little people and Italian from scratch - complete with Windows 7 door prizes since, after all, we're in Seattle.

Sarah and I by the water.

Pike Place.

Pretty veggies.

And more.

Fresh cheese curds, so fresh that they're squeaky on your teeth! Just like the ones we used to get at the cheese factory in Kalona when I was growing up.

We got some delicious ginger pigs to fuel our day of cooking.

Sarah made a lovely apple, pear, and almond tart.

I made about a million meatballs.

And then WE MADE PASTA! Fresh pasta is something that's been on my list of things to make, and Sarah and I were both excited to finally try it out. It was fun and it was difficult and it was stressful, but it was ultimately rewarding and delicious. After looking back on our experience and checking out a few pasta books today we've learned what we would do differently next time. Here are a few of them, in no particular order:

- Use pasta flour instead of regular flour.

- When kneading becomes difficult, or even hopeless, olive oil helps.

- Fresh pasta is not a quick process. At least not on your first time.

I was really excited to crack an egg into a well of flour. That was also on my list of cooking things that I've been wanting to do, whether it was in the process of making pasta or during some other endeavor.

Sarah was equally excited.

Three and three-quarter cups of flour. Four eggs in the well. A little salt. A little olive oil. A lot more olive oil to come.

Slowly mix them together with a fork.

The recipe we used told us after 15 minutes of kneading and stretching we should have a smooth ball of dough.

After 15 or 20 minutes and many drizzles of olive oil we had two still pretty crumbly balls of dough and achy arms and wrists. We were more than happy to let it rest for 30 minutes, and we would have been fine with letting it rest in the garbage for eternity. But we had people to serve, so we pressed on.

After some struggling we realized that pressing pieces out a little by hand makes getting them through the pasta roller much easier.

Crank crank crank.

Once you have a sheet rolled out things are somewhat smooth sailing. Unless it's too wide or you don't feed it in straight. We became familiar with the reverse crank.

Some of our noodles were a little on the long side. Or maybe Sarah just has really short arms.

And we have fettucini!

During the kneading phase we had little hope for results like these.

I was relieved that the pasta survived boiling and didn't dissolve once it hit the water.

I snapped a quick photo of the finished pasta and the spicy olive sauce that Sarah's boyfriend made to go along with it. Both the pasta and the sauce were a great success.