Claire Makes 3 Kinds of Homemade Pasta

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.