Home made pasta shapes

We love pasta, but a pasta machine is not always available. This is especially if you are cooking away from home. Sometimes you may want some variety from the tradition string pasta. This also a great way to get kids involved by letting them play with food. Here are a few Ideas we use.

Remember the shapes to not have to be perfect. In fact if they are not perfect, they show the rustic-ness and the care that went into the noodles. More interesting to eat...

Check this out too:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Pasta-making-table/

Step 1 Pasta dough ingredients.

There are two basic kinds of pasta dough, but of course you could introduce your own. Egg and eggless pasta are the two most prevalent.

Egg pasta:

3 - cups flour
4 - eggs
1 - pinch of salt
1 - teaspoon olive oil

Eggless Pasta

3 - cups flour
1 - cup water
1 - teaspoon oil
1 - pinch of salt

Colored pasta:

Red - To prepare a red pasta just add one tbs of tomato paste for each egg in the recipe.

Green - For green pasta, add 4oz/ 120 g of fresh spinach or 2 1/2oz/ 75 g of thawed frozen spinach for every egg called for in the recipe.

Yellow - The spice, saffron is used to make the dough yellow. Begin by soaking a pinch of dried or some finely chopped strands of saffron in 2 tbs of water. Let the saffron soak for approximately 5 minutes and then mix it into the dough.


With either ingredients:
Stir into a ball and knead for a short time
Cover and put into fridge to relax and cool for at least a half hour.
Roll out dough into a big square thin sheet.  If your counter is not gigantic, you may need to divide the dough into at least three parts.