07/04/25, Entry 02
As a non-cook, you may not let me near ANY kitchen. I think my best cooking achievement was probably making cappuccino flavoured muffins for school with the premade muffin mix. I don't know how I got it right to be honest, I have a crazy oven that says "oh, it's at 180 degrees" and it's the temperature of the fucking sun.
Despite not really being able to cook, I love watching food videos, especifically from Adam Ragusea and Preppy Kitchen but my smart, ever so intelligent ass decides "no, lets not follow any recipes from them...how about this one from lockdown! hey...should work, right?" and it did...I think I'm the problem.
My first problem was actually finding flour. All recipes called for either all purpose or 00 flour from Italy. All I could find was self-raising wheat flour, which I don't believe is even remotely the same thing. For like 3 months I couldn't find the fucking flour. Eventually, my sister's fiance tipped me off on a place on 14th Avenue, Johannesburg, that sold this flour. So yes, I made my first ever batch of pasta using 00 flour and probably caused a family curse on the Italian who made it
Once I had flour in hand, I got going. The video I followed was this one but I probably should've found a more in-depth tutorial (LIKE THE ONE FROM PREPPY KITCHEN UUUUGH) anyway, I digress.
So I throw my flour and eggs and olive oil into a bowl and get kneading. I swear, I kneaded this for like 15 minutes and it kept refusing to go together. So I kept adding more flour, but I think that was my ultimate mistake. The pasta definitely had flavour, but it was super duper tough. Like even when I did it correctly I still think I added too much flour in proportion to all my liquids. Once I'd gotten a smooth and not very sticky dough, I let it rest for 30 minutes.
When I got back, I rolled out my dough as thin as I can and I attempted to cut it, but it was all lumpy and uneven, so when I threw that into a pot and boiled it, it cooked super weird and didn't taste good at all. So I put it to rest for a couple more hours and come back at about dinner time.
Notes: Don't use a knife...use the pasta machine.
At dinner time, I've now discovered my parents had a pasta roller I never even knew about, and my mom helps me roll out this dough with the pasta roller, which makes it go much more smoothly and cuts them all even. I throw that shit into a pot and it suddenly tastes like heaven. Holy crap guys, that tastes like heaven.
I took some premade Woolworths sauce and put it on top because by this time it was nearly 6pm and I'd just gotten back from the longest Afrikaans lesson of my life. If I could describe the taste to you, it tasted very egg adjacent, but it a good way. It didn't taste just like eggs but I'd say that was the main flavour. It acted more as a sauce delivery device in my opinion.
If I had all the time in the world - definitely the homemade pasta. You can really taste when something is homemade and it's just perfect. I went to Barrington's in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa and they made the most perfect, homemade fresh egg pasta. I won't tell you what was in the sauce, because I have no idea, my mom says it's something with breadcrumbs and tomatoes, but it was good, and that's all that matters!!!
However, life is hectic, and we definitely do not have all the time in the world to sit around and make pasta homemade, so in most cases it's definitely pre-made. Even when I have time, I don't know if I salted the boiling water enough, but pre-made pasta is so much more salty to me. I do prefer a lot of salt though, like it's just a preference. I think I'm going to get cholestrol from how much salt I moer on things.
I think if you're bored and you have the ingredients, try it! Making food is fun. I won't say that I got bored. Maybe I did get bored waiting for it to rest but that's when you're not making anything! Overall, we achieved success!!!
+1 Success Point