Friday, January 14, 2011

Macaroni and Cheese for Dinner


So today I have taken the easy way out and made my version of mac and cheese for the kids dinner. This does mean making the pasta as well but pasta isn't that hard to make, especially if you have a helper in the kitchen like I do.

So to start, make up your pasta, I have been making pasta for a while now and have found that the amounts are a little about what looks right at the time, here are my approximate amounts:

Basic Pasta
100 g 'OO' Flour
1 egg
1 Tbs oil
1-3 Tbs water

This recipe is then just multiplied out for how much you want to make, tonight I have made 300grams of flour and instead of 1 egg replaced it with two egg yolks as I want the whites for cooking with tomorrow. The deep yellow colour of my pasta comes from the yolk of the eggs only, these are from our own chickens that have a better colour than even buying free range eggs from the market.
Mix/knead together to make a dough then use pasta machine or roll out to make your pasta.

When we went to America in November one of the major purchases that I made was the new Pasta Press for my KitchenAid mixer, this allows me to make the more shaped pasta. Why did I buy this in America? Simple really it was more than 1/2 the price here in Australia!

As Gracie had decided that we were having large macaroni tonight we put that plate into the machine, I then rolled the pasta into small balls,

and left the rest of the work to my kitchen help, Gracie.
The really nice thing is that all that needed to be done now is for Gracie to put the balls of pasta into the top of the press, and then cut the pasta to the length that we wanted.




Gracie putting pasta in press, pasta being extruded at bottom of press

pasta drying on tray.



To finish I just made a simple cheese sauce, mixed the pasta through it and put a little more grated cheese on top and into the oven to brown a little.

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