- I just think if you're gonna
try to make something healthy
don't eat pasta, not
that pasta isn't healthy.
I mean, it's not but,
we're eating pasta, okay.
[Italian music]
Hey everyone I'm Claire,
I am at home in my kitchen
and today, I am going to be making
some homemade stuffed pasta.
Making pasta at home, it
does require a few steps
and a piece of equipment but,
you know, everyone being
in the kitchen more,
it's actually pretty doable.
So up until recently,
I found homemade pasta very intimidating,
it was something I would watch
chefs make on cooking videos
and then I kind of
figured, it's just dough
and you know, shaping them together,
there's a lot of pastry
skills that overlap,
so I decided to try it
and I thought it was actually really fun
and more doable than I thought it was.
Okay, so I'm gonna grab flour and my eggs.
This is just all purpose
flour, which is totally fine.
Don't look in this fridge,
this is a disaster.
So I'm actually making a double recipe,
so I can have a lot of dough.
This is a time where
people are finding comfort
in carbohydrates and I don't think
there's anything wrong with that, so.
I'm making a well in the center.
I am going to add four
eggs and ten egg yolks.
Again, this is a double recipes
so if you're making it at home,
you're starting with 8 ounces of flour
and it's five yolks and two large eggs.
All right, so this is
gonna take me a second
'cause I'm doing ten of these.
All right, so that is all the eggs.
Obviously that's a lot.
So now with a fork, I kind of
start breaking up the eggs.
And the well is just there
to keep the egg contained
and the whole technique
here is to incorporate
more and more flour from the edges
and then you bring the dough
together and start to knead.
All right I think I'm basically
at the point where it's
set enough to bring the flour back in
and really start to
bring the dough together.
Okay so, I'm gonna
get rid of my fork.
And now,
I'm really channeling cooks
at home everywhere because
this is not my area of expertise
but again, it's dough, so
if you've worked with dough,
if you've made bread
before you know, it's not,
actually it's easier than
that in a lot of ways.
Now with pasta, the real
idea behind pasta is
that you want to develop
as much gluten as you can.
So, working gluten, you
know all I'm really doing is
kneading the dough until
it's super, super, supple
and smooth and that can take a long time.
What I like about fresh pasta
is the act of making the dough.
That's kind of why I'm making it.
So, this is the dough at the moment.
It is a bit wet and sticky
and not terribly smooth.
I am just going to be here kneading it
and adding flour little by little,
I mean not more than a
pinch or two at a time,
until it's very smooth and supple.
Now, I actually need to
cover it and let rest
before I can start rolling it out so,
that's it.
And so I'll let this rest
20 to 30 minutes and then,
once the gluten has relaxed a little bit,
I can start rolling it out.
so I just wanna show you
what the texture of the dough
actually looks like.
You can see on the surface there
that there's these tiny little air bubbles
and the whole texture is just
very very smooth and supple
and satiny and that's kind of
the best way to describe it
so, I'm kneading it, it's firm.
But it doesn't really hold cracks,
like it doesn't look dry
and that's basically it.
[twinkly music]
- [Man] Why don't we explain
why your hair is now wet
and it's clearly not the same time.
- I don't wanna explain the problem
'cause it's embarrassing.
How many days later,
what is it a week later?
After much back and forth
and looking back at all the footage,
we confirmed we do not have
a recording of me making
the ricotta filling.
So, I'm using whole milk ricotta.
This is a pound of ricotta.
I mean it makes quite a bit of filling.
Then it gets bound by one egg.
And that is just to kind of keep it
all together as it cooks.
So I have some red pepper flakes,
a generous pinch of that 'cause
I like a little bit of heat.
The ricotta is very mild so using
kind of a sharp, salty,
flavorful cheese is a good combo.
So I'm gonna use a little
bit of garlic powder,
which I think just doesn't quite have that
raw burn and bite.
So I'm gonna finely chop this parsley.
Again, the herb pieces fine because
I don't want like big shaggy
bits that are gonna be hard to
enclose in pasta.
For a little bit of
brightness, which is lovely and
I do happen to have a lemon here.
While I have my micro-plane out,
I'll throw in a little zest.
I have just a little tiny,
I guess it's a seed, nutmeg.
You just, this little rasp grater.
I think you want kind of a mild,
I mean, it should be well seasoned,
but I think you want something creamy
and a little bit mild so
that you're not overpowering
the rest of the dish.
So I'm gonna it to a pastry bag.
I have like a million of
these deli core containers,
which are so convenient.
This also helps eliminate air bubbles.
When I make the agnolotti,
you'll see I have to pipe a
long, even tube of filling
and if there's air
bubbles, it causes a break
and it's just not quite
as easy to work with.
And then there it is.
All evenly filled.
Just a little air pocket
out of the bottom,
but that's okay, it stays in place
'cause I haven't cut the end
and then it's ready to be filled.
All right, now I'm gonna
travel back in time
and show you how to make the filled pastas
that I actually did one week ago.
Here is the dough.
You get a nice close look at it.
It is firm but still soft,
you can see how it kind of holds
an impression of my finger.
So right here I have my KitchenAid mixer,
which has an attachment
that goes into the front of the mixer
and you turn on the mixer,
it spins the wheels of the attachment
and it's basically two rollers
that I can adjust the thickness and
it makes beautiful sheets of pasta.
You don't have to have
a KitchenAid to do this,
there are great models that just kind of
anchor to a countertop
and they're hand crank.
Those are great too.
This is, as I said a
double batch of dough.
So I'm going to divide in
half and then into thirds.
So you can roll the pasta by hand.
That is not something that
I'm going to opt to do
because it does take I think
quite a bit of skill and practice
to be able to roll out
such an even, large sheet.
Make sure that you're
getting really squared off
sheets of dough.
I think it helps to kind
of arrange the dough
into a rectangle from the start
and then I'm gonna start rolling.
So I just pass the
dough through the roller
and I do it several times
on the widest setting.
You can see that it already sort of
turned into more of an oval shape.
I fold the ends together like this
and kind of mush them.
So you'll notice on the first couple times
when you pass it through
that the dough kind of gets a
rough texture, that's normal.
Now that I've rolled it out
several times and the dough
has a nice even consistency,
I'm just going to keep going
one setting at a time.
Okay, so I'm getting
toward the thinner side.
And this is about as manageable a size
as I have found it
comfortable to work with.
I don't wanna have like a,
you know, an eight foot long
thing of dough.
This is seven out of
eight in terms of level
and I also wanna make
sure that I'm getting
the dough to start feeding
through the machine
all at the same point.
Okay so there we go.
I am going to turn off my mixer.
And I'm going to cut the
dough in half, actually.
Gonna eyeball half way.
Okay, so for ravioli, I
am going to start to pipe.
Not too big really.
Maybe I would call that
a tablespoon, okay.
So I have two, four, six,
eight, ten, twelve, fourteen
that I've piped.
To seal the dough, I just use water.
And I just spritz kind of all
across one side of the dough
and now I'm gonna lay
the second sheet of pasta
over the first.
Just gently draping and
I think the trick here is
not to stretch the dough too
much, not to really stretch it
over the filling, but
to let it drape itself.
Right here I have an air
bubble, but if that's the case,
my little cake tester.
What you can do is
actually burst it and then
get the air out and then
pinch it back together
so that the dough seals.
I'm just going around
each one and pressing out
all of the air.
Now I have this fluted cutter.
It's a fluted pastry wheel
or sometimes they call it a pasta wheel.
And I'm pressing really firmly
and the fluted edge is
there to really crimp
the layers of pasta
together and seal them.
If you have a little
round cutter like this,
it's a fluted cutter but
I'm actually using it for
the dull edge, like that.
You can use this to mound the filling.
You kind of work it very
gently around the filling
and that pushes the filling
into a nice even circle.
I also think it helps
to press out the air.
So it gives, I think a very
finished like professional look
to the ravioli.
So here's one.
I'm gonna hold up to the camera.
You can see it, so cute.
So, the idea for this next step
is to let them dry out a little bit
and at this stage, once they're dried out,
you can also freeze them.
So this is a great thing to use
to stock your freezer a little bit.
So the second shape I'm gonna show you is
agnolotti, again, just myself
learned how to make these so,
I feel like we are in it together.
Same process of rollng out the dough.
I'm going to move my roller
back to the widest setting.
I found it helpful to
use the back of your hand
to catch the pasta 'cause your
finger tips are less likely
to wanna poke through the
dough, as it gets thinner.
Agnolotti, I just learned this shape
and I fell in love with
it, it's so fun to make.
So I'm gonna cut these in half lengthwise,
because I really only need
a two inch wide strip.
Gonna take my filling, which
has that same size opening,
it's probably like a half
inch opening that I snipped
and I'm going to pipe a snake
of filling all the way across.
All right, so I am applying
even pressure to the piping bag
and piping a long snake of dough,
I mean of dough, sorry keep
saying dough, of filling.
Now, my spray bottle.
Just so the dough sticks to itself
and I'm going to fold from
one side over the filling
so that it meets the other side,
like I did for the ravioli,
I wanna press out any air
so I'm going to run my finger along side.
Okay so now, here's the
fun part with agnolotti.
I am going to pinch to
basically squeeze the filling
from between the pieces of dough
and I'm going to make
like little cute purses.
So now, with my cutter,
I'm going to trim off
this rough edge and make
it nice and straight.
So now, the last step in
forming the agnolotti,
I'm going to use the
cutter to cut in between
each little area where I pinched.
One thing I was doing that's
helpful is to kind of press
each little on agnolotti down so that
there's contact with
that lip of dough.
This is an agnolotti shape.
You can see it's like this little purse
with that little lip.
And you know, similar to a ravioli.
So, there they are, next to the ravioli.
I didn't think you need to see me
roll out the dough a third time, so,
I have the same thickness
of pasta dough rolled out.
I'm gonna show you the third
shape, which is mezzaluna.
I'm going to just pipe
similar sized mounds of dough
as the ravioli.
Okay, now, same as the
ravioli, little spritz.
And now, instead of putting
a second sheet on top,
I'm just gonna fold the dough over.
Okay.
Using a smaller cutter to
just form the filling into
like a little, its own
little half moon shape.
I also poked a tiny little hole
in between each mound of dough
and that is just helping me
eliminate all those air pockets.
This is a larger fluted cutter.
So now I'm going to basically
use half of the cutter
to punch out these
little half moon shapes.
One thing if you want edges
to seal when you're cutting is
press down and then once
you hit the surface, twist.
And basically, you have a
mezzaluna, a little half moon.
You see that?
Very, very cute.
Okay so, I made three shapes
of pasta with one filling
and one dough.
I made most of the agnolotti
so I'm gonna cook some of those.
So I'll do you know, a
handful of these guys.
Pasta going in.
So I have a little bit
of water in this skillet
and I'm adding some
little pieces of butter.
I didn't use salted water
here but it is salted butter.
So you can see just really simple
and I'm gonna add the pasta.
You can turn off that water.
Really kind of bathe it in.
All right, so here's my little
agnolotti swimming around
in their bath of butter.
Into the shallow bowl,
little squeeze of lemon,
tiny bit of salt, why not?
So here is this beautiful
fresh homemade pasta, agnolotti
with ricotta filling.
Mmm.
So good.
What I think is fun about
making pasta at home is
there are really kind of endless
variations that you can try
and I also think that it is a
relatively forgiving process.
I think one thing to remember
is when you're making pasta at home,
even if your raviolis open up,
or your pasta's a little wet,
it's gonna be fine
and it's gonna be delicious
in the end anyway,
even if it's not perfect.
It's really just there as a fun activity
and if they're not perfect, it's fine.
These are just the most
delicious little buttery pillows.
They're so good.
They're slammin'.
You're gonna put that
in there, aren't you?
- [Man] Yeah!!
- So actually, one thing
that I keep right here
that I use all the time in the kitchen is
a little spray bottle of water.
I also use it to spray my cat
when he's on the countertop
'cause that's not allowed.
But I also use it in cooking.
You guys, my cat is
literally glaring at me.
He's, I wish you could see it.
He's glaring at me, he's so mad.
I think 'cause he saw me
pick up the water bottle.
He does not like this.
If I, if I point this
at him he'll run away.
Felix, kitty, [kissing].
Yeah he ran away.
When the pasta is being boiled.
You guys, the cats are freaking out.
Felix!
I have to spray them.
Felix, stop that!
Kitty.
If I show him the spray
bottle, sometimes he'll stop.
Kitty.
But yeah now he's freaked out.
They don't get along, it's
really intense in this house.
Okay, I'm done.
