Pasta Solves All

So I just got home from 2 weeks in California for work and I leave Tuesday for Italy, which means I have an awful lot to do at home in just a few days. In the past 48 hours I've done 3 loads of laundry; gone to the gym for step class and an upper body strength workout; cleaned my entire house; gone grocery shopping; gotten my oil changed (which is the only time I hate having a hybrid because it costs twice as much for the synthetic oil); gotten my snow tires off (so winter you'd better better be over); went out to dinner to use a Groupon that was about to expire;  finally hung up the jewelry rack that's been sitting in my closet since I moved; went to kickboxing (which was a total waste of time because there was a sub instructor and she was terrible); met my friend Breezy for a concert, a beer, and gelato; helped chaperone my Mom's Sunday School class at the Children's Museum (which I actually loved because it let me drool over tons of babies and act like a 6 year old myself); started packing for Italy; and made pasta.

So let's talk about the pasta. I'm hosting girls' night tonight and we have an international theme. I naturally picked Italy as my country because I wanted to make pasta and justify buying my very expensive Italian pasta maker. I made 2 kinds: my normal plain egg pasta, and also a vegan spinach pasta. They both came out awesome, but I was so surprised how good the spinach pasta was considering it's just spinach and flour!

Pasta Dough
2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1 cup semolina flour
1 tablespoon kosher salt
4 large eggs

Add the flours and salt to the large bowl of a food processor and pulse to combine. With the food processor running, add the eggs until a dough balls forms. Once the dough ball forms, run machine for 30 seconds to knead. Divide dough into 4 equal parts.

Spinach Pasta Dough
6 oz fresh spinach leaves

Dough ball!

1 1/2 cups  unbleached all purpose flour
2/3  cup semolina flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt

Use the large metal chopping blade and the large bowl of the food processor. Add spinach and process until finely chopped. Add flours and salt and process until a dough balls forms. Once the dough ball forms, run machine for 30 seconds to knead. Divide dough into 4 equal parts.

Once you have the dough comes the fun part! Run each dough ball through the rollers starting at width 1 (the thickest) until you reach the desired thickness.




Then, slide the cutting attachment onto the pasta maker and feed the flat sheet of dough through the cutter. Like magic you have perfect pasta!

 Add to boiling water and cook for 3-4 minutes. Voila, perfect pasta!

 So gooooood. 2 bowls of pasta, cheese, tomatoes, and arugula later and I'm a calm, happy camper.