Homemade fettuccine and fresh tomato sauce. It’s a process but it’s worth it
The Ingredients
Flour (unbleached all purpose), eggs, fresh oregano/parsley/basil, garlic, onion, roma tomatoes. There’s definitely more that goes in later (spoiler alert: crushed red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, bay leaf, olive oil)
Water
Fill a pot or a deep pan with water… enough to cover all 12 of your roma tomatoes.
Score ’em
Score the tomatoes on both sides. Just cut a little “X” through the top and bottom. Find out why next week (two pictures down.)
Chop dat onion.
Self explanatory.
Chop dat garlic.
Mmmmmmmm garlic.
Boil dem tomatoes
When the water hits a boil, toss the scored tomatoes in for 30 seconds.
Rinse, rinse, rinse.
Pour some cold water on the tomatoes. Use a colander to make it easier.
Peel!
In case you didn’t figure it out, that scoring and the quick boil loosened the peels. They should slide right off.
De-seed.
There are bound to be some seeds left, but rip the tomatoes apart by hand and get the seeds and goop out from the inside.
Sweat the veggies.
Garlic and onion in a tablespoon or two of olive oil on medium heat until they get translucent. Don’t brown them. Just sweat them.
Sweaty.
Like a fat man on a treadmill.
Add the other shit!
Tomatoes, chopped herbs, salt, pepper, crushed red pepper flakes in the pot! It’s starting to look like a sauce.
Meanwhile, in pasta town…
3.5 cups of unbleached, AP flour down on a cutting board (or the counter if you wipe it down first. Make a well (like a volcano) and crack 4 extra large eggs in the middle.
Just beat it.
Beat it.. beat it.. and then slowly incorporate the flour until about half of it has mixed with the eggs and it looks like a very sticky dough. Then use your hands and start kneading! If it’s too sticky, add another 1/4-1/2 cup of flour and keep going. Too try? Try 1 TBSP olive oil. Don’t overknead though!
Rest that dough.
Wrap it in tin foil and let it relax for 20 minutes or so.
Look, our tomatoes broke down!
Want a more rustic sauce? Use a potato masher at this point and grind it down a little. Or a food mill.
Don’t like rustic?
Blend it. Use a food processor or blender or immersion (stick) blender. Puree it a little or a lot. Your preference.
Roll it out.
Flour your work surface and roll it out. (I prefer to rub some olive oil on my pin so the dough doesn’t stick to it.
Start slicing.
I recommend using a pasta machine because this sucks, but it works. Roll your dough into a rectangle and cut it as uniformly as possible.
Noodles!
I made fettuccine. Throw some flour on them and toss them with your hand so they don’t stick.
Cook ’em.
Boiling water. Al dente takes a lot less time than dried pasta because it’s already hydrated. Four minutes should be good.
Drain ’em.
We’re in the home stretch.
Sauce ’em.
Yummy.
Garnish!
I tossed on some chopped parsley, chiffonade of basil, and freshly grated parmigiano reggiano. Make sure it says “parmigiano reggiano” on the label. Not parmesean cheese. Otherwise it isn’t the real deal. The extra money for the good stuff is worth it.
The end product!
It was delicious. Very time consuming cooking (and cleaning) process, but not all that difficult for anyone with some decent kitchen skills.
