I was very excited to try it out, and this weekend finally had the opportunity. Over at The Splendid Table I found a relatively-simple looking recipe for Spinach Pasta Dough. The recipe is from a book entitled The Glorious Pasta of Italy, by Domenica Marchetti. If you're not already familiar with The Splendid Table, by the way, you might want to check it out on NPR - it's a terrific radio program and they have some excellent recipes online.
So...on to the pasta!
Ingredients
- 9 oz/255 g fresh baby spinach leaves
- 2 extra-large eggs
- 2 to 21/4 cups/255 to 285 g “00” flour or unbleached all-purpose/plain flour
- 2 tbsp semolina flour, plus more for dusting the work surface
- 3/4 tsp fine sea salt
- Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Drain and squeeze as much water as you can out of the spinach, before putting in a food processor with one egg. The recipe says to use extra-large; I only had large eggs, but I don't think it made a significant difference.
Process until you've got a spinach/egg puree. Take this out and put it in a separate bowl, and then clean and dry the food processor. Add the flour mix back into the cleaned food processor bowl and pulse just to combine it. Then add your spinach puree back in along with the other egg, and pulse the entire thing together until it makes little crumbs. You should be able to roll them together into a soft ball that is not too crumbly or too sticky. If it's too crumbly (like mine was at first), add a smidgen of water. If too wet and sticky, add a tablespoon of flour at a time (or a teaspoon if you want to be more cautious).
Once your dough is this consistency, turn it out onto a clean surface lightly dusted with semolina flour. Roll it into a ball. Now is when you knead the dough. I have always found the concept of kneading intimidating, but this was really not so tricky. Use the palm of your hand to push the ball firmly but gently away from you, flattening it as you do so. Fold it back over on itself, rotate the dough a quarter-turn, and do it again. Repeat this for a few minutes until the dough is smooth. The recipe says it should be "silky" but mine did not seem so.
Wrap it up in plastic wrap and let it sit for half an hour. Mine sat for about 50 minutes, but I don't think that had a negative impact. Then take your dough ball and cut it into pieces about 1 cm wide.
You do this a couple of times, until the sheets are the width of the roller, and then sprinkle the pieces with flour (I used semolina). Here is what they looked like after the first pass through the roller.
Then turn the roller up one setting and feed the pieces through again. Do not fold them over before feeding them through this time (I mistakenly did this but I don't think it had a huge impact). Here's the dough after the second setting on the roller:
Isn't that color lovely? Third setting:
Fourth setting, which is the one appropriate for fettuccine:
Then we swap the roller attachment for the fettuccine cutter, and start feeding the pasta sheets through.
Once they are cut, they are ready to cook! I of course had neglected to start the water boiling because I was too busy playing with the machine, so the pasta had to sit for a bit. This is when I discovered that we definitely need some sort of holding or drying rack for the pasta, because I only have so much countertop space. Once the water is boiling, the pasta only needs to cook for 3-5 minutes, since fresh pasta cooks faster than dried.
Love that bright green color! For what did we use this gorgeous pasta? Splendid Table had a recipe for Green Fettuccine with Asparagus, Basil and Butter that sounded scrumptious, and it was absolutely fantastic. I cannot recommend it highly enough. The three of us ate all of it and our friend went to bed and dreamed about eating more of it. How's that for an endorsement?
Something tells me there will be a considerable amount of pasta-making in my future...






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