Thank you, Millie.

A long time ago, in another lifetime, I used to be married.  My mother-in-law was a great cook of Italian cuisine and enjoyed eating all sorts of good things  Time passed, things changed and now I am divorced, but one of the things I have retained was her way of cooking a lot of Italian dishes.  Simple ingredients, fresh, and filling.

One of those things for which I had a hankering lately was home made pasta, or "home mades" as she used to call them.  The recipe is simple and takes surprisingly little time from start to finish.

You start out with a ratio of one egg to one cup of flour, in my case tonight, three farm fresh eggs from my CSA share (Shout out to Red Earth Farm!) and three cups of flour, add a dollop of olive oil (don't get mixed up and put in balsamic vinegar instead... just sayin'), and about a 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Three beautiful eggs in well of three cups of flour

Put the flour and salt into a bowl, make a well in that and crack the eggs into it and add the oil.  With a fork, start beating the eggs and pulling the flour in from the sides of the well.

Pulling the flour into the egg

At some point, the dough will become too stiff for the fork and you'll have to switch to your hands.  What you are looking for is a relatively dry dough.   You might be tempted to add water, but don't.  It'll be okay.   Once you get as much as the flour kneaded in as possible, let the dough rest for about 10 minutes.  This well let the gluten relax and you'll have an easier time of it from here on.

Nice dry dough

First pass

Get out your trusty pasta machine that your son gave you for Christmas one year, find the only place in your kitchen where you can clamp it to a counter and with the rollers on the biggest opening, and run a wad of dough through it three or four times, folding it back on itself in between passes.

after running through smaller opening

Then switch to a smaller opening and run the strips through again.  This time, you will notice the dough will be thinner and smoother.  Switch to another smaller opening and do it again.  Continue this until you've reached the smallest opening.  Place the strips of dough over something to hang while you finish up the rest of the dough.


Start water to cook the noodles on the stove.  You'll want this ready to go once all the strips are cut, or the noodles will get a little gummy and stick together.  Not the end of the world, because you can stir like a maniac once you dump them in the water, but it is easier to keep this from happening.

Once you have all the strips completed, run them through the cutter.  I chose the smaller one tonight to make skinny noodles.  Hang the completed noodles up while you finish cutting the remainder of the strips.

After that is all done, dump the noodles into hot boiling water (I added salt) and cook on a rolling boil for about 5 minutes.  Home made noodles don't take nearly as long as dried store-bought noodles, so keep testing them for doneness.

When you are satisfied, drain the noodles and dump into a pan of hot spaghetti sauce (mine was also homemade from my CSA share of tomatoes.

Remove from heat and let noodles sit for a few minutes, stirring to let the noodles absorb the sauce.  (Here in Philadelphia, Italians call this "gravy")  Serve with a nice sprinkling of freshly grated parmesan cheese and a fresh salad.

Mangia!