Earlier this month it snowed and I really wanted to make homemade pasta, so I used my Imperia pasta machine that my grandmother gave us for a wedding gift, and the Imperia MilleGnocchi attachment that was another wedding gift. We've been married 6.5 years and this was my first time using either of these! This attachment makes three pasta shapes - Gnocchetti Sardi, Cavatelli and Rigatelli.
I searched online for info on this attachment and unfortunately could not find much. I used Anna 00 flour for the pasta. I made this on my new dough board that I recently purchased. It was on sale for $90 when I bought it but has gone up in price since then. This board is great and I've used it for bread dough, cookie cut outs, and pasta so far. I clipped my pasta machine to it because I didn't want to attach it to my table. It worked well but when I went to take it off afterwards, I noticed that there were black marks on the wood from where the feet of the pasta machine were. I was able to rub some of it off but not all of it, so next time I will have to be more careful of that.
This pasta was pretty easy to make. I started to mix the dough in my KitchenAid mixer with the dough hook, but it wasn't mixing well so I ended up mixing it on my dough board with my hands. The dough recipe was very vague and did not provide an amount of water that should be added, or how much salt. I ended up leaving the salt out and just added small amounts of water at a time until the dough looked right.
Once the dough was ready it took me about an hour to make the pasta. The hardest part was rolling the dough into "breadsticks" by hand, as it just did not roll well for me. Next time I may try rolling out the dough with a rolling pin and cutting it into strips instead and see if that works better. I ended up with about 1 pound 9 ounces of pasta. It was about 6 cups worth. I cooked half of it for dinner with bolognese sauce that was in my freezer and froze the other half in a ziploc bag to enjoy another night. It took a bit longer to cook than I anticipated (I'm used to cooking homemade spaghetti which only takes a few minutes to cook), but the pasta was delicious! I've only made spaghetti on my own once, but this was my first time making pasta on my own and I was very pleased with the results.
Update June 2024: I made this again today - the recipe that is on the box of the attachment does not seem right. It is way too dry and needs a lot of water added. It only calls for 3 eggs so I increased the amount of eggs in the recipe below to 5 eggs (based on another recipe I found online). Make sure your eggs are at room temperature before mixing the dough. I did not add salt to the dough - I salt the boiling water before I add the pasta in. Rolling the dough into "breadsticks" can be tricky but I found if the dough is too floury it will not roll well - to remedy that, wet your fingertips a little and then it should roll better. This time I clamped the machine to my countertop which worked better than attaching it to my dough board. My 6-year-old twin boys helped crank the machine and had fun doing so - this is a great meal to make with kids! I cooked half of the pasta we made for myself and my two boys and froze the rest, but it wasn't enough so next time I will cook it all. The pasta took about 13-15 minutes to cook and tasted incredible!
You can use a semola pasta dough recipe for this attachment instead, which is just semola flour and water (no eggs). Here is another similar egg pasta dough recipe that uses half of each 00 flour and semola flour.
Pasta Dough for Imperia MilleGnocchi Attachment
500 grams flour
5 eggs, room temperature
Water
Salt (optional)
Mix all ingredients. If the dough is too hard, add a little more water. Knead until smooth.
Form into a ball and place dough in a plastic bag or a covered bowl to rest for 30 minutes or more. Knead again. Dough should not be hard.
When the dough is ready, cut off small sections and form into long cylindrical shapes (like breadsticks). Make sure to keep the unused portion of the dough covered at all times so it does not dry out. Sprinkle the "breadsticks" well with flour and place into the appropriate hole of the MilleGnocchi attachment. Turn the crank and the pasta will start to fall out of the attachment (place a bowl there to catch it!)
After forming the pasta, spread it out and flour it a little bit to prevent the pieces from sticking, then dry the pasta. Once it is dry, put it into zip lock bags to freeze until needed. They freeze very well.
Updated photos from June 2024:
No comments:
Post a Comment