I have never made pasta before, but it is my children's favourite food so I decided to give it a go. I searched through my cookbooks to find something that looked simple for my first try but also something with a good flavour that would suit my family's needs. For my birthday I was brought 'LEON - Fast Vegetarian', and I found the recipe 'Orecchiette & tomato sauce', this seemed to fit the bill.
Fridays are the only days where I get to leave work early (as we work half day on Fridays) and I pick my children up from the school gate. This day was a good one as I got to announce "Hey, who wants to make pasta with mummy?".... unanimous "Meeee" were screamed back at me.
It was so easy to make and the kids helped, they each took a turn in getting their hands in the bowl and making the dough, which was against my youngests OCD tendancies.... (I swear she has mild OCD.... everything has a place at the age of 3 and she gets a little precious if her hands get mucky), buuuutttttt she didn't moan or complain the whole time, she was too enthralled in getting her hands in the gooey dough and really excited that she was making her own dinner. They then helped roll into snakes and I sliced into disks while they pressed the discs into the little ear shapes. Lots of giggling and they got really into it. I will say the result of this process may mean a plate of very misshapen pasta 'ears' but as my eldest stated.... it will still taste the same :-)
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| Florence mixing dough |
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| Morgan mixing dough |
It was then just a case of popping the pasta into boiling water and jobs a good one! The tomato sauce itself was also simple, and the result a wonderful garlicy tomato smooth sauce. I started making the sauce while the dough was sitting, so in the end the timings were just right. I was able to blend and simmer the sauce as the pasta was cooking.
The end result was clean plates and a very happy family, the whole meal took about 40 minutes to do..... but this could really be 25 minutes as it took longer with the kids helping. Also, I think is I cut the discs too thick, next time I will make them a lot thinner as some of the pasta was a bit stodgy, but that as I have stated is more my preparation than the recipe itself because the discs I had cut thinner and squashed myself were cooked just right, the children did not press as hard and therefore the shapes were thicker. So next time I cook this and I will cook it again as it was delicious, I will just take more care to cut them thinner.
This is a recipe I would highly recommend, also because if you make enough of the pasta you can freeze it before cooking, which is just brilliant to have in the freezer for days when you have little time.
If you would like to try yourself this is the book....
and I find the LEON website really handy too :-)
#yummypasta
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