PASTA MAKING..........A FAMILY AFFAIR
Although it happened sometimes, eating store bought pasta in our family was not really acceptable. If it wasn’t homemade, it just wasn’t good…..or so they thought. Didn’t much matter to me at the time because as long as I got to eat, that’s all I cared about. Making pasta from scratch is really time consuming and a lot of work for sure!
My dad ranted and raved for several years….something about if his daughters didn’t learn how to make pasta, the tradition and art of it would be lost in our family forever.
I was more interested in reading my books, talking to my friends, and just other things in general that kids do! Why the heck would I want to spend time elbow deep in dough?? I had watched my mother and aunts and it just didn’t look like fun to me!
Several years later, my dad got on the subject again. “You girls need to learn pasta making”!
“What”?? “Daddy, are you on that again”?
“Yes, %$*^@%, I am”, he said! “You gotta learn”!
So, it just happened that one day, my sister and I were at my parents house the same day that two of my aunts were there. Holy cow!!! We were trapped!! Our other two sisters were nowhere to be found either, so they got out of this whole ordeal.
Let the lessons begin!!
Aunt Eliza and Aunt Stella had made pasta from scratch since childhood and were masters at it. They taught my mom when she and my dad married. Now it our turn to learn.
Ok, my sister and I gave in and asked where the recipe was. Recipe?? Recipe?? What recipe? “We’re Italian, we don’t need a recipe! “Just pay attention”!
First you pour out some flour on a board or counter top….a clean one of course! Then you make a well in it and pour in your other ingredients! Slap all this together with your hands, have this mess all over your arms, elbows and all up in your eyebrows, knead till you think your arms are gonna fall off. Throw it up against the wall, on the ceiling, and stomp on it a few times (Just kidding of course)> Ha….that’s all there is to it. At this point, you can stop and catch your breath for awhile.
Then comes the fun part……rolling the dough! My Nonna had this rolling stick, not a rolling pin like normal people, oh no, she had to have a STICK! I always thought it was more like a club! When she passed away, Aunt Eliza inherited the “stick” and she used it until she passed away, at which time my dad and then my sister got it. So, I guess that “stick” is here to stay!
Anyway, as I was saying, the rolling starts. The aunts had a particular way that you had to roll it too! You had to start out by wrapping the dough around the stick, place your hands in the middle and start rolling from the middle outwards, then back toward the middle, then out, and so on until your hands were sore. That’s when you knew to stop! It’s a real tricky thing to learn.
Get the dough all rolled out then ya gotta let it dry for awhile, all spread out on something flat! That’s when you can clean up the counter and get ready to start the cutting process after the dough dries.
Once the dough has dried out a bit, you roll it up tight in a long cylinder shape, place it on a cutting board, and start slicing very thinly. If you don’t cut your fingers off with this process, then the dough can be flung out in long strips. It’s always best if one person slices and one flings! Makes the process go much faster.
Aunt Eliza was lightning fast with the slicing process. As far as I know, she had all her fingers intact when she passed away at age 99 and 8 months.
Of course, some of the dough could be used to make Ravioli, which was another, long, drawn out process. Ground meats of several varieties were used and it had to be ground and seasoned….oh no..... don’t even think about going to the store and getting already ground up meats. That was just to darn easy!
After grinding the meats, place a sheet of dough on the counter, start placing little dabs of meat in rows on the dough. Slap another sheet of dough on top of that, press and seal the edges all around, then start slicing down thru each row until you come up with individual Ravioli!
Again, Aunt Eliza was a pro at this.
Are you tired yet? Well I am and we aren’t finished yet!
What were the men folk doing during all this? Standing around drinking coffee, trying to look cute, and pretending like they knew what was going on!
Now, it was time for us girls to try it!
It's been many, many years since these lessons took place. The aunts and our parents have passed on, but my sister and I still get together sometimes and make pasta.! However, we work a little smarter, not harder these days. Oh, we still use the rolling stick, but now we use a big ole professional type mixer to knead the dough and a pasta machine for shredding. No sense in wearing ourselves out!!
Hope you enjoyed this little pasta making lesson! Stayed tuned for other lessons to come!
Remember,
Keep on the Sunnyside!
All photos except 1-3 property of @sunnieside
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