Pasta!
Store-bought noodles are hard and you cook 'em until they're soft. Homemade noodles are soft and you cook 'em until they're firm.
We got a small hand-crank pasta maker yesterday, and today we made some pasta dough and made fettucini with our homemade marinara. Came out great. I have a few questions, though. Any other pasta makers out there?
Some recipes say to add salt. The pasta machine recipe explicitly says, "No salt." How come? Is that to keep the salt from corroding the machine?
After you've cranked the noodles out of the machine, you're supposed to let them dry. How come? You're just gonna dump 'em in boiling water to rehydrate them.
Anybody know a chef at Olive Garden? I'd love to get their recipe for marinara. (I know, I'm weird.) 
Posted by Dave Blog Tag: Chatter
Posted 5/28/2007 11:33:00 PM
L
On 5/29/2007 7:39 AM, 
Dan Lyke said...
On 5/29/2007 11:07 AM, Candace said...
On 5/29/2007 11:13 AM, dkgoodman said...
On 5/31/2007 1:35 PM, Dan Lyke said...
On 5/31/2007 1:56 PM, dkgoodman said...
On 5/31/2007 7:59 PM, Melissa said...
On 6/01/2007 8:45 AM, dkgoodman said...
7 Comments:
My sweety eschews wheat, so although I have a pasta machine and know how to use it, I keep a stash of the dried stuff for personal use.
But in a previous relationship we had the dance in the kitchen down to a point where the difference in cooking times between dried pasta and fresh meant that it would have taken longer to make several dishes with dried pasta. And although dried is a passable substitute, I prefer the fresh.
I'm even on my second pasta maker, wore out the first one.
I'm guessing that the line cooks in individual Olive Gardens have no idea what's in the marinara sauce, that's something that comes in trucks. It's been a long time since I'ave been to one, but I'd also bet that you have to use something for an additional boost of umami flavor, might try getting some MSG and adding that to your favorite marinara sauce.
From Hormel Foods - Pasta Tips and Techniques:
Drying the cut pasta noodles or shapes for 15 minutes or more before cooking will allow the pasta to firm up a little and prevent the pasta from sticking together when cooking.
From Food & Home - Lesson No. 9 - Homemade Pasta:
...never add salt, no matter what the recipe says. It will only detract from the texture of the dough. If you want salt, add it to the water when you cook the pasta.
Thanks, Dan. If they use MSG, it's not enough to give me a headache as MSG often does.
Wow, Candace. Good finds! We made the noodles without salt, but salted the water, and it tasted great. Letting the pasta dry first may keep it from sticking in the pot, but you have to be careful laying it out to dry or it sticks together while drying! :)
There are assorted other things that give that umami taste, MSG is just the easiest straight flavor enhancer to get for the non-food-scientist.
It's cheap and easy to get. I don't use it, but it might be worth having someone in your family experiment on you to see if the headaches are really coming from the MSG or something that's often correlated to it.
Or just use more tomato paste [grin]
I used to have a drying rack, although that was one of the casualties of the new relationship, but just having the rack made strand management in the kitchen that much easier, if you're a serious pasta maker a rack is well worth it.
I'm always in favor of a nice rack. More than one errant strand did get out of hand, and I was thinking of maybe pressing a shoe rack into service. A quick check on eBay shows several at reasonable prices, though, so maybe I'll pick one up next time we go shopping. Thanks for the advice! :)
The first time I made pasta from scratch, I let it dry on clean bath towels. The fuzz stuck to the noodles. It was gross, but we ate them anyway. After that I used plastic wrap and just turned them.
I've tried cooking them without drying them at all and it turns out fine. That's much easier.
LOL I remember making cheesecake one time as a kid and dropped it on the floor. We ate it off the floor. (Fortunately the floor was recently cleaned.)
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