making tortellini

Stephanie and I are going to start a cafe and write about all of our adventures on her blog...well, we don't have the cafe yet, but we can still write about our food adventures.

After watching the Good Eats episode "use your noodle 2" (twice) I decided to try making my own tortellini. I had wanted to try homemade pasta for a while, but I don't have a pasta maker. Alton said I can make these tortellini without one, so I had to try it. Oh, I'm on winter break, meaning lots of free time and lots of experiments in the kitchen. I spent a few hours making this batch, and ended up with a little more than 50 tortellinis (and messed up only 4).

I followed the recipe exactly - I even bought a wedge of Parmesan cheese (I had to hold my breath when I grated it). The recipe called for 3 cups of flour for the well, and I ended up only using 2 of those cups because that's how much the wet ingredients "wanted," and the episode said not to force it.

I now know why when i order tortellini at restaurants they give only about ten - it takes a VERY long time to make. I froze half the batch, and served the other half for dinner.

It was delicious!

Now i'm just waiting for someone to buy me this so I can make pasta all the time (and not spend three hours shaping each all those tortellini).