The pasta maker's coming out of the box!

Today we watched as Chef made fettuccini and cheese ravioli, then we made them ourselves. Pasta-making is a treat. You can't rush it, you have to stand and work and "turn up the tunes," Chef recommends... my kind of cooking. Yes, you can make the dough in a mixer, but you don't know if it's ready until you touch it, so why not make a little volcano of flour, add some salt, crack in a couple of eggs, (take off your watch), and start squishing things together. Very satisfying. Perhaps part of the reason that pasta is such soul-nourishing food is that you really put yourself into it when you make it. "Become one with it," as my former supervisor Ted Bentley would say. We used our tomato sauce, frozen from last week, to make marinara (adding sautéed onions, reduced with red wine, and chopped herbs, then blending). We topped a shallow pool of sauce with five ravioli filled with seasoned ricotta, a sprinkle of parmesan and basil chiffonade. And we tossed the fettuccini in alfredo sauce, which came together in a sauté pan in about three minutes. Chef showed us how to plate a serving as a "curl" of pasta, somewhat upright on the plate, with additional sauce spooned around the edges and some minced parsley topping the whole of it. "This is delicious," Chef said, tasting our plate, "and I know what you're having for dinner." But no, not tonight. Even though it's a school night, there's a fancy Christmas party to attend, and before I start readying for that, I have to finish up my HFCS rant for tomorrow, and read the potato chapter.

But tomorrow night, definitely. Pasta for dinner.