Saturday October 10. My first foray into the realm of making pasta from scratch using my new pasta machine. I’ve made ravioli before, rolling the dough out by hand, but never long pasta. I was a little worried that the pasta machine would be difficult to use, but it was actually quite easy. I was happy that the directions that came with the machine mentioned that if you didn’t want to use eggs for the dough you could substitute “a glass of water” instead. This was annoyingly non-specific, so I also referred to Vegan Dad’s post about making pasta. I ended up using 2 cups of pasta flour, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1/2 cup water. I did not add salt, since the pasta machine directions said “do not add salt!”

Here’s the dough coming together. I just mixed it up by hand and it was very easy.

Getting the machine set up was a little annoying since you need to clamp it to something so it doesn’t shift around, but my countertops weren’t deep enough for it to work. I managed to clamp it to my dining room table, which was just barely deep enough.

Once you’ve got the machine set up, you just cut the dough up into smaller sections and feed it through the machine, starting at the thickest setting and progressively getting thinner with each time through. The first ball of dough I put through the machine came out with holes in it, so I just added more flour and then it was fine. The more dough you put through, the longer a sheet of pasta you get. I’ll definitely be making my ravioli sheets this way in the future- way easier than rolling by hand especially with my extremely limited counter space.

When I fed the first batch of dough through the cutter, I let the pasta just pile up. They were then a pain to separate to hang up to dry. For subsequent batches I tried to catch and stretch out the cut dough as it came out so it wouldn’t stick to itself. I hung it over cabinet doors on a clean towel to dry (thanks to Vegan Dad for that idea!).

While I was making the pasta, I roasted some garlic in the oven. I remember the first time I ever had whole cloves of roasted garlic. It was on a family vacation to Disney World when I was maybe 14. We went to an Italian restaurant, and they brought out fresh bread and a ceramic crock containing a whole head of roasted garlic that you could squeeze out and spread on your bread. So good. Who knew that eye-opening culinary experiences could be had at Disney World of all places?

Roasting garlic is super easy- just get a whole head of garlic, cut off the top so all the cloves are exposed, put it in a piece of foil, and drizzle with olive oil. Wrap it up and bake it for a while (sorry I don’t know how long- I just check it when I can start to smell garlic!) While raw garlic is very sharp and probably not something you’d want to eat on its own, roasting garlic completely changes the flavor, making it sweeter and more mellow, but still garlicky.

I made a roasted garlic cream sauce using my roasted garlic. It’s also great for making salad dressings with, or just spreading on bread. I also want to try making garlic-flavored pasta!

To make the cream sauce, I toasted 1/4 cup almonds and 1/4 cup pine nuts, then ground them up finely in a blender. I squeezed the cloves of roasted garlic into a pan with some melted Earth Balance (you could also use olive oil), and mashed the cloves. Then I added the nut meal and some flour to the mashed garlic cloves and EB and stirred until it was golden. Then I added some vermouth and a little plain soymilk and tamari, and a little more EB. White wine would work great here too. I like to keep vermouth on hand because it is similar enough to white wine but won’t go bad like white wine will. I think I’d probably use white wine if I lived in a normal state where you can just pick up wine with the rest of the groceries, but alas I live in PA and the wine is kept in a special store with the rest of the alcohol, except for beer, which is kept in an entirely different kind of store. Stupid. Anyway, I only added a little salt and pepper because I didn’t want to distract from the garlic flavor.

I also made the first loaf of No Knead Bread of the season! I try not to bake too much in the summer because I have to keep it cool in the apartment for my chinchillas. But as soon as the temperature drops, it’s No Knead Bread time! I didn’t document all the steps involved in that because I’ve done it before. Anyway, this batch was another resounding success, as usual.

I made a simple salad with arugula, kale, spinach, cabbage, carrots, and pickled red onions too. The dressing included roasted red peppers, agave nectar, basalmic vinegar, flax oil, and mustard. I have one of those little Magic Bullet blenders, which is great for mixing up small batches of things like salad dressing. I used to buy bottles of salad dressing, but it’s so easy to make from scratch!

To accompany the pasta, probably some of the last beautiful summer tomatoes from the CSA, griddled in a skillet with a little olive oil until soft and slightly blackened, topped with fresh basil.

Fresh pasta takes only a minute or two to cook, so you can leave it until last after everything else is prepared.

Here’s everything all together! I was really happy with how the pasta turned out. It had a nicer texture than boxed pasta. I’ll be experimenting with adding flavor to the pasta in the future- perhaps roasted garlic, or roasted red pepper…

Today I picked up some fresh corn, zucchini, and tomatos from the farmer’s market. Autumn is upon us, so I’m thinking this will probably be the last of the corn on the cob and super-fresh tomatos for a while. I griddled the tomatos with a little bit of olive oil until they were soft and slightly charred, then garnished with some fresh basil (from the basil plant that I’ve managed to keep alive!). The tofu was coated with a mixture of brown mustard, agave nectar, sage, and hot Hungarian paprika, and baked until golden. Served with saffron basmati rice with pine nuts and sauteed shallots and pineapple habanero salsa. The little crispy things in the front are zucchini slices coated with seasoned panko crumbs then baked. Usually I would have fried these but I decided to give baking a try and I was quite happy with the results. It took longer than frying of course, but is so much healthier. The small dish contains more of the agave mustard for dipping.