Making Different Pasta Shapes at Home

[Chris Amirault]

I've been fooling around more often with homemade pasta lately, and I've been trying my hand at making different pasta shapes. I'm no expert at all, and I'm hoping that others can chime in with ideas and photos of techniques.

Besides long shapes like tagliatelle and linguini, the two shapes that I have been making are farfalle and orecchiette, and I documented the exceptionally easy and forgiving orecchiette below. I always use the dough from the eGCI course on stuffed pasta:

400g ‘00’ flour

4 large eggs

1 additional egg yolk

1 tablespoon olive oil

pinch of salt

Once the dough rested, I rolled it out two about 1/2" and then cut it into strips about the same width. Then I rolled the strips into tubes.

I then cut the tubes into small bits:

Then, one at a time, I'd center them on my thumb:

Push them down:

The pull them slightly to release:

Halfway there:

The whole batch:

After cooking in well-salted water and draining them, I sautéed them with some cavola nero, onions, sausage, and S&P:

I'm sure others have a broader repertoire of shapes than I do. I've never tried strozzapreti, for example, and would appreciate a tutorial. The examples I've seen on the internet must make shapes the length and thickness of a large carrot.

[Lisa Shock]

seems to be more like what you're looking for. Remember that there's still some air space inside of the twist.

[Chris Amirault]

Thanks, Lisa, but I can't make out the basics: thickness of the rolled out dough, what exactly happens in their palms. Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I'd love more guidance.

[nakji]

Hmm. I just bought a bag of pasta flour on impulse when I saw it in a shop a couple of weeks ago. I'd been avoiding it, wondering how I could possibly get dough rolled thin enough - but Chris, those strips are fairly thick. I think I could manage them with a rolling pin. Orecchiete are my favourite shape.

[Lisa Shock]

Ok, so maybe you need more detailed instructions, but, I originally saw

video and discarded it because of poor sound quality and because it doesn't show the finished product well. That said, it appears to show the dough rollout and size fairly accurately. (looks thin, and no more than a centimeter in width) This is a shape of pasta that my Fresh & Easy sells dry in bags from Italy. So, copying the length and number of twists seems fairly straightforward.

I have to admit that all of my knowledge of Italian cookery has been from books, television, or online. I've got no substantive experience learning to cook from any real-life Italians. But, I have read a lot of cookbooks...

[djyee100]

I'm fascinated by "fusilli calabrese" that I've read about in Rosetta Costantino's new cookbook, My Calabria. The pasta is rolled and shaped around a knitting needle.

A video on it:

ETA: That's Rosetta on the video, BTW.

The recipe for the goat sauce that's paired with this pasta:

http://www.projectfoodie.com/cookbook-recipes/recipe/fresh-knitting-needle-pasta-with-goat-sauce.html

More pasta shapes from Calabria, including Costantino's homemade pasta recipe, on page 59. From Googlebooks:

http://books.google.com/books?id=86R77RdzTj8C&pg=PA46&lpg=PA46&dq=costantino+my+calabria+homemade+fresh+pasta&source=bl&ots=vW5lGMMub7&sig=gb66jnX8DY1cVmgSkeh0msZ68MM&hl=en&ei=8a1PTZaNOYK6sQPu9dm8Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Edited February 7, 2011 by djyee100 (log)

[Chris Amirault]

That fusilli calabrese looks fantastic and doable both. Does it turn out like very fat bucatini?

[Mjx]

When I was a kid I lived in Florence, and I remember watching strangolapreti being made (by my best friend's family cook/maid, I believe, but it may have been someone else: this goes back to when I was about seven):

She rolled out the pasta dough (which was slighly reddish, it may have had wine in it) a bit thicker than you would for pappardelle, then cut it into fairly rough strips somewhere between the width of tagliatelle and pappardelle, and the length of her hand from the tip of the middle finger to the base of the palm. Then she rolled them back and forth fairly casually between the palms of her hands, turning them into uneven wiggles over their entire length.

The idea is to be able to quickly create a pasta form that is filling (the original reason perhaps being the the [possibly apocryphal] story behind the name), so precision isn't at all an issue, and it's definitely a fun shape to make if you're a really little kid, since the ones you make look every bit as good as the ones the grownup in charge is producing .

I'd like to making more filled pastas, and play with the flavours of the dough and fillings, myself (ever since the carob thread, I've been wondering how plain carob flour would work in a rabbit-filled pasta).

[Alcuin]

Garganelli can be done pretty easily at home too. You cut a pasta sheet into squares, then lengthwise between two corners, roll it around a tubular pencil (i.e. not one with angles so it doesn't roll away on a table) on top of a comb (a long comb like an afro pick is best) so as to make ridges. You get a tubular, quill-like macaroni with ridges outside to catch the sauce.

[runwestierun]

Chris, you can make pretty striped pasta, too.

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/askville/291827_answers/1294689120300_stripedpasta.jpg

Color pasta sheets with vegetable purees, using about 2T per 6-8 oz. pasta dough (spinach, beet, carrot, tomato). Adjust flour content if necessary. Roll colored pastas into 1mm thick sheets and cut with a fettuccini cutter.

Roll a sheet of plain pasta dough 2-3mm thick. Place the colored stripes on top of the sheet alternately with white space showing in between. You may have to moisten the underside of the stripes slightly. Run the whole thing through the pasta roller to adhere the stripes to the sheet. These will be white on one side and striped on the other. If using for ravioli or tortellini, be sure the white side faces in. (You can make wiggly stripes or polka dots using this method, too.)

Alternately, you can stack sheets of alternately colored pastas, moistening between the layers. Then you can cut sections and run those through the roller. That method is described here.

http://kuriositaetenladen.blogspot.com/2009/01/pastakolleg-teil-2-gestreifte-nudeln.html

I have found that the second method is much faster, and fine for dried pasta, anything except filled pasta. With a filling, pasta made with the second method seems more inclined to split, but that might just be my error.

[Chris Amirault]

As I walked around the preschool where I work today, I found myself wondering what playdough tools I should bring home for this project....

[djyee100]

That fusilli calabrese looks fantastic and doable both. Does it turn out like very fat bucatini?

I've never made this pasta, not even eaten it, so I can't tell you what it's like. If you decide to make it, pls tell us about it.

[djyee100]

That fusilli calabrese looks fantastic and doable both. Does it turn out like very fat bucatini?

I asked Rosetta Costantino your question, and this was her reply by email:

Yes the fusilli does turn out like a big fat bucatini. If you have a copy of my book there is a picture of the cooked fusilli on page 44. See page 48 - 52 for all the various shapes of pasta in Calabria.

Page 44 may be viewable on Googlebooks. Keep scrolling.

http://books.google.com/books?id=86R77RdzTj8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=my+calabria&hl=en&ei=a9xSTdnNIoP2swOj8ZGvBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Chris Amirault]

Over on the Modernist Cuisine topic I made a big batch of fetuccine, which turned out great:

Definitely had a moment of wanting to keep them as whole sheets and make lasagna....

[Jon Savage]

I'm going to try making the fusilli calabrese tonight.

There is a pretty good description of the method here on Rosetta Costantino's site.

To paraphrase it- once you've made pasta dough and it has rested 30 minutes take a small piece of it and make a snake about 3/8 thick, cut these into 3" lengths then use a knitting needle or piece of coathanger to form the pasta as shown in her video upthread.

Edited February 22, 2011 by 6ppc (log)

[Chris Amirault]

I'm very eager to see how it turns out. Please provide photos if at all possible!

[Jon Savage]

I'm very eager to see how it turns out. Please provide photos if at all possible!

I'll try Chris- All I have is my Iphone since our good camera is off doing science stuff in (on really) the Antarctic sea with my spouse. The upside is I have plenty of time to perfect this (and other methods) in the month until she returns.

[Jon Savage]

Ugly pic as promised

It was remarkably easy to make and I'm confident that the pasta will look prettier with more

practice.

I'd probably make a slightly softer dough than usual next time, this was 1 c flour, 1 egg and a few drops of water. I served it with a quick sauce of DOP Gorgonzola, a little sweet butter, dash of pasta water & black pepper.

I sent the method to my wife aboard the RV Melville- They've got flour and downtime .

Edited February 23, 2011 by 6ppc (log)

[Ader1]

Slightly O/T

I've got a pasta maker and I want to make my own noodles. I currently don't have a cutting blade suitable for this size. I believe the ones I have are too big. However, it is easy to buy different size cutters. Sizes available are: 2 mm which I think is diameter as it's a spaghetti cutter. The rest are widths of strips: 1,5 mm ; 2 mm ; 4 mm ; 6,5 mm. There are much bigger ones but I don't think they would be suitable. I was hoping to make something similar to Dejah's above and some Dan Dan Noodles. Although I see Dejah's noodles are round as opposed to strips and the seem finer than spaghetti so maybe my pasta maker isn't ideal? Any thoughts?