Pappardelle with meat sauce

January 17, 2016

 Mike gave me the pasta attatchments for my kitchenaid for Christmas!  Oh holy cow are we going to have fun now!  My first attempt at pasta was pappardelle.

Pappardelle [papparˈdɛlle] (sing.: pappardella) are large, very broad, flat pasta noodles, similar to wide fettuccine.  The name derives from the verb "pappare", to gobble up. The fresh types are two to three centimetres (³⁄₄–1 in) wide and may have fluted edges.

I used a recipe I found online to make the dough.

3 1/2 cups of flour
3 large eggs
1T salt.

Make a pile of the four and dig a little well in the middle of it.  drop the eggs and salt in and keep adding flour from the edged to the batter until you have a smooth stiff dough. (my dough was VERY stiff, and I may have added too much flour!) Scrape off your board of the excess flour and knead the dough until its smooth and pliable. (I found this VERY difficult!)
Wrap in plastic wrap and let proof for 30 minutes.
While the dough was proofing, I made a lovely meat sauce.

Meat Sauce
1 Lb ground beef
1 Lb italian sausage
one large onion, chopped
6 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 quart jars of homemade marinara sauce (You can buy some if you didn't can any this summer!)
 Brown the meat and onions, add the garlic and sauce and simmer on low all the day long! It should reduce by about half)

I took a small handful of the pasta and flattened it into a disk and sent it thru the pasta machine on the widest setting. This was painful, and I thought I had done something terribly wrong, because it came out all broken and shredded looking, but I folded it in half and put it thru again.  I put it back thru about six times and it became a beautiful sheet as wide as the machine.  Then I started lowering the width, on each pass until I had pasta I could almost see thru.  I put it on a floured tray and lightly floured it so it would't stick together.
 When I had it all flattened, I cut it into ribbons about one inch wide and set it aside while I boiled water.
Unlike dried pasta, fresh pasta only needs to boil about 3-5 minutes.
Then I tossed it with the lovely meat sauce and topped it with some nice Parmesan cheese.

Manga!

Thanks for the pasta machine Mike, I love it! Next time: Fettuccini