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I harvested these vibrant, fresh beetroot from my veggie patch and decided to make some beetroot dip with some of them. I’ve topped it with some toasted hazelnuts and Danish fetta. Enjoy x
I must admit I’ve always used egg noodle pasta from a packet, but have always wanted to make homemade pasta. So for my birthday last week, I decided to treat myself to an automatic pasta making machine that promises homemade pasta in just 15 minutes. Excitedly I brought the machine home and read the instructions. I popped the ingredients into the machine as per the recipe book enclosed. After a few minutes, indeed, fettuccini started to emerge. But a few cm out of the machine, the strands began sticking together. After a few minutes, the dough stopped feeding through all together. So I kept opening the machine to push the dough forward so it would continue excreting. The process took about 45 minutes instead of the promised 15. When I boiled the pasta, it remained stuck together in thick clumps and the end result was dense, chewy lumps of fettuccini. So I did a bit of googling and as it turns out, the automatic machines do work, but the quantities need to be very precise. A slight miscalculation and you end up with the problem I had. From the reviews I read, the pasta from the automatic machine is dryer, thicker and less delicate than authentic homemade pasta, but still a reasonable result considering minimal effort. The machine had lots of good reviews and some people swear by it. In terms of cleaning, it was reasonably time consuming with lots of different attachments and nooks and crannies. So, I returned the machine for a refund and replaced it with a good old fashioned pasta roller and made it the traditional way. So from now on, for me, it’s the old fashioned way when time permits and a packet of pasta when it doesn’t. Making your own pasta is not as difficult as you might imagine. Here’s the process; Combine the following ingredients into a food processor; 3 cups 00 flour 4 large eggs (up to 5 if the pasta is too dry) 1 tbsp olive oil ¼ tsp salt Pulse until it combines and starts to form a dough. Pour it out onto a clean surface and knead for 5-10 minutes. Wrap it in cling wrap and leave it at room temperature for around 30 minutes. Unwrap the dough and chop it into four equal portions. Working one portion at a time, rewrap the other pieces in the cling wrap so it doesn’t dry out. Roll the dough with a rolling pin to flatten it a little then feed it through the widest roller (setting #1) on your pasta roller. Fold the dough in half and feed it through again. Do this a few times. Then decrease the gap (move it to #2) and then feed it through again. Continue to narrow the roller gap one number at a time and feed it through until it reaches the desired thickness. I stopped at number 5 for spaghetti. You can then roll your pasta through the spaghetti or fettuccini rollers. Hang the pasta on an airer and allow it to dry for 20-30 minutes. Do this with the rest of the dough. After drying for a short while you can store the pasta in an airtight container in the fridge until ready to use. This should make enough to feed approx. 6 people. When you are using fresh pasta, it cooks a lot quicker than dried packet pasta, so keep a close eye on it so that it doesn't overcook. Buon appetito. I like to pickle the daikon before using it in salads, but you can use raw daikon noodles in this salad, it will just have a stronger more peppery taste.
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