We’ve been a bit more than slightly obsessed with making our own hand-made fresh pasta lately. Recently, when I was shooting images for a new italian restaurant opening in our area the chef decided to have me photograph him making a quick batch of fresh pasta. Free pasta making lesson! Thank You! I knew it was simple but had never taken the leap to give it a try. I had been quite content to pour my boxed pasta into the boiling water and call it a meal. Now that my kids have tasted the difference there might be mutiny next time I reach for the box. I better start figuring out how to make shapes. For now I’m only skilled at fat fettuccine type pasta.
The recipe is simple…
1 and 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 and 1/2 cup semolina flour.
4 room temperature eggs
That’s it!
The semolina gives it a beautiful creamy color and you can actually taste the eggs! 
Get dirty! Yes, you can put it in a stand mixer with a dough hook but it’s fun to make a mess once in a while. Make a mound of flour with a divot in the center. Add your eggs. Start from the center mixing until you are able to form a ball of dough. Keep kneading until smooth.
I use an attachment for my stand mixer but any pasta maker will do. I imagine you could roll it out with a rolling pin but that would be a great deal of work. And a good arm workout! Maybe I should give it a try next time.
Cut your ball of dough into 6 pieces. One piece at a time feed it into the pasta maker on the 1st setting (the widest) do this three or four times folding the dough in half or thirds before putting it back into the rollers. Then send it through a couple times on 2 then again on three. We stopped there because we wanted relatively thick pasta but you can keep going. With each setting change the rollers make the sheet of pasta thinner.
Lay your piece of pasta on your lightly floured work surface then sprinkle with a bit of the combined flours. Then roll the dough into a lose log. Cut the log into pieces the with of your desired pasta size. unravel the rolls and there you have fresh pasta ready to cook.
Ok time for a shout out to my son Mark who is 14 and already a fantastic cook. Get in line girls! He’s going to hate that I wrote that. Giggle!
Add your fresh pasta to a pot of salted boiling water. It’s tricky to say how long because it depends on how thick you make your pasta. This took about 8 minutes. We like it al dente. When cooked toss it in your favorite sauce. This is not a low calorie dish but one of our favorites! 
Our favorite sauce, like most dishes I make, can be changed up many ways.
Here’s how we did it tonight…
2 TBS olive oil in a skillet
Add 1/2 brick of Philadelphia cream cheese
salt and pepper
Add 2 cloves of garlic chopped
Simmer and stir with a whisk to melt cheese.
Add 1 C half and half (because that’s what I had in the fridge) keep whisking.
1C FRESHLY grated parmesan cheese
Add 1/2 cup fresh chopped parsley.
Keep whisking
Add one or two Tbs of the pasta water.
Add drained pasta to the sauce and toss.
Serve and enjoy! 
Check back and let us know how yours turned out!
