Pasta Making with flour + water’s Chef McNaughton

A few weeks ago, I spent a glorious evening alongside Chef Thomas McNaughton of flour + water learning how to make homemade pasta. flour + water happens to be one of my favorite restaurants in the city, so of course I nearly fell off my chair when I found out Thomas was going to teach a class on how to make his house specialty. Also, since I’ve never made pasta, I figured his class would be the perfect introduction!

We started off the class by making ricotta, which we later combined with fresh herbs and seasonings for the pasta filling. Basically, you bring milk, cream and salt to a “rolling” boil and then add some lemon juice and simmer over low heat until the mixture curdles. Sounds and looks gross. But, after you strain away the liquid, you’re left with delicious, unbelievably delicate ricotta that can be used for a number of recipes (or eaten plain).

But, back to the good part – homemade pasta. Chef Thomas taught us to make tortelloni, a rectangular, stuffed pasta that looks similiar to ravoli, using three simple ingredients: flour, egg, and salt.  Here are some tips about the ingredients:

• Flour: Use any type of flour (wheat, white, etc.) so long as it is “00″ flour. “00″ refers to how finely it is ground and is available at specialty markets. “1″ or “0″ grinds are more coarse.
• Eggs: Only the freshest, highest quality eggs will do. Chef Thomas uses eggs from Marin Sun Farms, which sells eggs at at the San Francisco or Marin farmer’s markets, or through their CSA.

Beside sharing his secret recipe, Chef Thomas passed along some other helpful tips on how to make pasta:

• Knead, knead, knead! The longer you knead a pasta, the better it will taste. Chef Thomas claims that his staff knead dough no less than 45 minutes before rolling, cutting and cooking it. Fortunately, the people in my class took turns, but even after 5 minutes of kneading by arms were spent!

• For stuffed pastas, roll the dough thin. It’s important that the stuffing isn’t overpowered by thick dough. You can use thicker cuts of pasta for spaghetti and other noodle-shaped pasta.

• Dress the pasta simply. Chef Thomas likes to let the pasta shine through by accompanying it with a simple butter sauce. Yum!

If you have tinkered with the idea of making pasta, grab a group of 3-4 friends together and make a night of it. It’s takes some arm work, but it’s fun and sooo rewarding!

Tagged as: class, Flour + Water, homemade pasta, pasta