PASTA IN DENMARK

I'm back!!!  After a month off from writing my blog (our son's wedding, a trip back to the states, moving to a new apartment in Denmark among other things) I am ready to start writing again!!

Mary and I invited friends over for dinner on Saturday night.  Gaston Lamontagne is the Canadian Navy representative for the program I work on.  He and his wife Pernille, and  two kids Anna and Emil, and Gary Latimer, Irving Shipyard Program Manager all joined us.

We decided to do a Spaghetti dinner, with me making the pasta.

My sister Debbie got me started making pasta a few years back.  She got a pasta machine as a gift and while visiting once, we made pasta together. I was hooked.  So Debbie, the world has you to thank (or blame) for me forcing my pasta on the general public!

Pasta begins with dough.  My recipe for pasta dough is:

2 1/4 cups flour
1/3 cup of water
2 eggs
1 tablespoon Olive oil
1 teaspoon salt

Dump the flour in a bowl and make a "volcano" in the middle.  At home, I do this on a board, but I don't have one here (yet) so I used a bowl.

Whisk the eggs, water, oil, and salt together and pour it into the volcano.

Mix and stir, then need the dough until you get a nice ball.

Wrap it in plastic and let it sit for 1 hour.

I made three batches.  The color of the pasta was beautiful.  I think it was the eggs.  The yolks of Danish eggs are very orange!

I have a basic pasta machine, hand cranked with rollers that can be adjusted to make the dough thinner and thinner.  Mary went to the local hardware store and bought a wooden broom handle.  I hung it from the ceiling and presto, one pasta drying rack!

When the dough is ready, I cut each ball into eight pieces and start cranking them thru the machine to kneed the dough.

Once kneeded, I run the piece of dough thru the machine five times, each time moving the rollers closer together.  This makes the dough thinner and stretches it out.

After it is thin enough, I then run it through the spaghetti cutters.

And sixteen pieces of dough later, you get this.

Mary made the sauce.

And we all had a wonderful time!

It's nice to be back writing my blog again.  I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I do!

(And I didn't forget about the third dough ball.  I am making that today for us to eat later in the week!)