Fresh Fettuccine al Pomodoro
Print RecipeIngredients
- 1 cup plus extra for dusting Tipo 00 flour
- 2 eggs
- 7g plus 1 tbsp olive oil
- dash of salt
- 1 tbsp organic ghee
- 3 stalks of organic fresh basil
- 1 tsp red chili flakes
- 1 cup halved organic halved grape tomatoes
- 2 tbsp water
- dash lemon juice
- 4-8 oz freshly flaked parmesan
- freshly ground pepper
Instructions
Start by making the pasta dough. Take the flour and create a small well in the middle. Crack both the eggs and add a dash of salt and 7 g of olive oil before using your fingers to gently start bringing in the flour and mixing it with the egg mixture. Continue to create the dough by slowly bringing in the flour and using your hands knead into a dough. You may want to have a bench scraper on the side to assist in bringing in the flour, knead for 10 minutes before covering in plastic wrap and setting it in the fridge for 3 hours.
While the pasta relaxes, you can make the pomodoro sauce. Heat the ghee in a sauce pan and reduce to medium as you add the grape tomatoes. Add 2 tbsp of water, red chili flakes, before you cover the pot with a lid and cook down for 15-20 minutes until the tomatoes have mostly disintegrated. Shut the heat and add finely chopped fresh basil, freshly ground pepper, and a squeeze of lemon juice. Let sit at room temperature until you make the pasta.
After a minimum of 3 hours ( feel free to make the pasta dough the night before), take the pasta out and lightly flour a working surface. Cut the dough in half and place one of the halves on your working surface and the other back into the fridge, use a rolling pin to get it to about 1/16" thick. Using a very sharp knife cut the flattened pasta dough into 1/5" long strands. A good reference for the width is that each piece should be about 1/2 the size of your thumb. Lay the cut pieces on a pasta drying rack, or over your rolling pin as you continue to cut. Remove the second half of dough from the fridge and repeat rolling it out and cutting the fettuccine.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and add in the fresh fettuccine, they will be ready in about 3 minutes when they rise to the top. Drain into a colander and place back into the pot with 1 tbsp of olive oil. Stir quickly and add the pomodoro sauce from the sauce pan to the fettuccine. Reheat for 3 minutes and transfer to serving plates with freshly ground pepper, parmesan flakes, and additional fresh basil.
Notes
If making a portion for 2, you can store the second half of the pasta dough wrapped in plastic and in the fridge for the next day.
Don’t be intimidated by making fresh pasta, once you do its hard to go back to that boxed stuff. You dont really need anything fancy either, this recipe only used a kitchen counter, rolling pin, bench scraper, and knife to form the fettuccine. Fresh pasta cooks A LOT faster than the dried out stuff so its very difficult to maintain al dente, the shorter you cook it the easier it is to build it into your sauce after and cook it off a bit more. As soon as those strands rise to the top of the boiling water, its done- take it off the heat right away. It doesn’t have to be perfect, unless your standard is a Michelin restaurant, in which case I’m giving you the go ahead to mess this up and play with it. This is a great way to experiment with making pasta as its one of the easiest methods. Theres no special cutting techniques or instruments, like a chitarra that is used. Nor are there lobsters that you have to poach, extract meat, and use the shell to render a sauce. Just a simple tomato basil sauce, with a bit of heat and topped with that long time pasta partner, Parmesan.
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