Poor Man's Pasta

A versatile, easy to make recipe using only eggs: Olive Oil Flourand some water, not pictured.

This recipe was found in Lidia's Italian cookbook at the Urbana Free Library -no that is not the right title, but the gist of what I remember from it. We used it to make the lasgna sheets, the Linguini from a couple weeks back and also for a home experiment involving ricotta and our raviolli cutters- not sure it they were good enough yet to call raviolli, but when we get to that point, you'll be sure to know as we feature it with some yummy spring or summer garden veggies.

Pasta is amazing to make by hand. It is wonderful to combine 4 simple, beautiful ingredients and create something so versatile, so easily taken for granted, and such a staple for so many people. And while yes, pasta is cheap, the packaging is bulky, it travels a far distance, is most likely cheap because of agriculture subsidies, has more ingredients than necessary, and making it from scratch with local ingrediants** really makes it a decadent part of the meal and has the bonus that you know all that went into it, which makes me feel a lot better putting it in front of Asher (who eats it up!)

**eggs (our backyard) flour (tomanous farm in Mahomet) and water (we love the mahomet aquifer!) with organic olive oil from the coop (sorry while we were inspired to grow Olives after visiting New Zealand (that country has everything) we don't have a local source)

Poor Mans Pasta

2 Cups Flour

2 Eggs

1/4 Cup Olive Oil

3 TBSP Water

To eliminate any confusion when you count the number of yolks, I doubled the recipe for the pictures.

How To:

Sift Flour and make a well in the center

Whisk Eggs

Pour Eggs into well of flour

Add the olive oil

Mix gradually with a fork, your goal being to evenly wet all of the flour. Continue until you have a crumb and then knead the crumbs together with your hand within the bowl. Once it is all stuck together, knead on a clean surface (flour shouldn't be necessary), for about 8 minutes, until the dough is shiny and elastic feeling.

At this point, wrap in plastic wrap or throw in a bag and allow to rest for at least 20 minutes. In my minimal experience with this dough I have found out two things that have made it easier to roll out. Make sure you knead it enough and allow it plenty of time to rest, the doughs that have sat for 40+ minutes have been better to work with.

After the much waited anticipation, open up the dough, cut it into three pieces, wrap two back up and start the rolling process. First using your hands to form the dough into a flat patty of sorts, more square (what is a square patty called?) Roll in all directions, pick it up to flip often and don't hesitate to stretch it with your hands, pulling is fine- it is not delicate. Roll it as thin as you can, our dear Lydia says it should be about 10 inches wide and 15 inches long... I don't have the patience to measure and when making lasagna noodles just make sure I could get two noodles to fit the shapes out of each rolling. Another tip: roll on a wooden surface if you have one, I used a cutting board that worked really well.

Cut to the desired shape and cook. For cutting long noodles, flour the to of the dough heavily, fold into thirds (flour between all layers of touching pasta) and cut to the width you like. For lasagna, lay out your dish and cut to size you want to work with (use your imagination). Cook in a pot with enough water, for about 6 minutes. The noodles freeze great, just put them on wax paper on an cookie sheet in small piles and freeze, bag up once they are frozen.

Enjoy! This was a lengthy tutorial, but really it was easy!