The Great Pasta Machine Disaster
We eat a lot of pasta. Indeed, a lot of the food I cook is Italian/Mediterranean influenced. And one day I’d like to live somewhere where the olive is native.
One thing I’d never done, though, is to make my own pasta. I’d kind of lumped it with making pastry as one of those things I don’t do so well, and there are perfectly acceptable alternatives available from the shops.
As you may have guessed, that argument doesn’t really rub in my kitchen, so I bit the bullet and bought myself a machine and all the OO flour, semolina and the nice fresh eggs that you need.
First mistake – I went against the advice I’d read in many places on the Web. I thought I’d dip my toe in the water with a cheapo Chinese copy of the Italian original from Argos, thinking it would survive long enough for me to figure out if I would use it. The machine didn’t last the day out. Clank!, it went. Crunch! Click, click, click as I turned the handle. But, most satisfyingly, Crash! as it hit the bottom of the bin.
Second mistake – not realising how many football pitch lengths of space you need to roll the stuff out. Just not possible in our kitchen. And it’s not the smallest around.
Third mistake – trying to clean the machine for the first time in the same session as we actually wanted to make and eat a meal of pasta. We finally ate at around 10:30pm, with me feeling exhausted and grumpy.
It’s back to the pasta from the deli for me.
