Pasta, pasta, pasta

Our oldest son has been on a Play-Doh kick lately that borders on obsession; if he's not playing with his Play-Doh he's demanding to either make more of it from scratch or to watch You-tube videos of other people playing with Play-Doh (yep, that's a thing).  It's fun, creative play and it's inspired me too.  I've been practicing making pasta shapes while we're playing together and secretly, at night, I have been doing my own shaping with pasta.  

Besides my obsession with Pasta Grannies  I've found this video to be ridiculously addicting helpful.  

I couldn't do it without my handy Kitchen-Aid mixer with the pasta attachments..  With the main rollers I've made batches of  egg-noodle dough during the day and then pulled them out to play with after the kids have gone to bed.  It's mindless fun.  I've learned a ton and we get the eat the delicious results.   

A tray of fun ready for the freezer.

I've learned so far that: 1) I miss my ducks.  Ok, chickens eggs are great and all but duck egg pasta has a wonderful color and just feels special.  2)  I really should get some sort of large wooden cutting board to work on like the Pasta Grannies have - I've been working on the kitchen table (an old 30's thing) and it doesn't seem to work as a cutting surface - the pasta sheets slide around too much when they're being cut.  3) Play-doh is not pasta.  It's fun to practice with but pasta is thinner and dries very quickly.

These were run through the pasta rollers many, many times with fresh thyme folded into the dough.  Then I hand-cut them into strips, my attempt at fettucine.

Here we had it with chicken.  It's this recipe for creamy lemon chicken thighs.  Her version looks amazing and it was a really yummy dish.

Bow ties, or butterflies.  Wow, what fun to make.  I've used these as tiny accents to vegetables, a nice bit of bite and texture.

Salmon cakes and peas with the butterflies.

When I asked my oldest what he wanted for dinner yesterday he said "chicken and broccoli".  He doesn't eat chicken and broccoli, Daniel Tiger does.  But it sounded good to me so I made it for dinner with mushrooms - kind of a white wine "chicken Marsala" thing.  

I haven't used these little cavatelli yet.

And here's the sauce I made from all of the tomatoes in the freezer:

It's from Cooks Illustrated magazine.  You can't can it, it needs to be frozen but it couldn't be simpler.  It's very thin and as a result does not take much to coat the noodles - I put three containers of it in the freezer.

This fresh pasta is so wonderful in that I can make a batch of different shapes, throw them in the freezer and have them when we want them.  Frozen, they cook up in seconds.  It's been a really relaxing way to pass the time and something fun to learn about.