With a surplus of eggs in the fridge and more coming on a daily basis, there was only one thing to do.....make pasta! Usually I make fresh pasta and then we eat it on the same day, but obviously we weren't intending to eat this much pasta in one sitting so that left only 2 choices - freeze or dry. I have frozen fresh pasta in the past, but it usually seems to get forgotten about in the freezer. Recently I tried drying some pasta and this appears to work well, plus I am constantly reminded of its presence when I open up the pantry!
So this is the pasta in a semi-dried state, I've left it out all day and will probably leave it overnight just to be sure it is thoroughly dry before bagging up in zip-lock bags.
Some recipes for pasta include semolina, and sometimes water too, but I find that just plain eggs and flour (high grade) works fine. My ratio is usually 1 egg to 100g flour, but since my hens produce slightly smaller eggs than the 'norm' I increased this by 1 egg over 400g flour (in other words 5 little eggs/400g). But it's easy to tell if there's not enough egg to flour ratio as the mixture will not form into a dough without enough moisture i.e. egg. Clear as mud? I hope so.
Anyhow, I've used up close to a dozen eggs here and now have all this delicious pasta at hand. It was relatively quick to make and roll, obviously the drying time and having racks of pasta about the place is a tad inconvenient unless you have a huge bench in your kitchen (I do not, so use the tops of my chest freezers as well as the kitchen table). I also started off hand cutting the pasta but quickly resorted to using the fettucine cutter on my machine - SO much quicker and easier than peeling apart your hand-cut pasta. Do you make your own pasta? and if so what's your preference for type - I haven't got past fettucine and lasagne sheets, although would like to give ravioli a go sometime.
