Homemade bow tie pasta

Patrick and I are really getting the hang of homemade pasta making. After our most recent venture Patrick exclaimed "wow I'm getting really good at this!"

Here's our post on how we do it. For a quick recap: in the food processor we combine one egg per 100 grams of flour per serving. So we typically do 2-3 eggs and the appropriate amount of flour. Once processed we pat the dough into a 1" thick rectangle/square and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Then we section it up and let the pasta maker do the work.

On this particular night I wanted to get fancy and make bow tie pasta! For the bow ties after the dough had been rolled through the roller to the desired thickness I used a paring knife to slice the sheets into 2" vertical strips then went back and made 1" x 2" rectangles. After the rectangles were done I went through and pinched the middles together to create the bow tie.

In this picture you can see that I worked on a floured 

cutting board to make the bow ties. I would work with 

one section at a time (so roll it out, cut it, pinch it, and make

the bow ties) before rolling out the next section. I kept the

 pasta dough under the bowl to prevent it from drying out while

I was working on the bow ties.

Here are my finished bow ties! I kept them spread out until 

Patrick got home from work and we cooked them.

This was made towards the end of summer and I used all sorts of fresh vegetables from the CSA. The only thing not sourced locally was the flour for the pasta and onion used in the sauce!

I wanted to keep the sauce focused on our CSA produce so I sauteed red bell pepper with an onion then added in chopped roma tomatoes. Once the tomatoes had stewed down a bit I transferred this to our blender and blended until there were no large chunks. During this time I browned the sweet italian sausage in that same pan. After it had browned I returned the tomato mixture back to the pan and finished the sauce with a touch of cream. Finally we tossed in the bow tie pasta.

Tossing in pasta

Finished product

It was a perfect night for some al fresco dining on our back porch. 

We served the pasta dish with a caprese salad. Yellow roma tomatoes topped with fresh basil, fresh mozz cubes, and a drizzle of nice balsamic.

And there was also a bottle of champagne on this particular evening! I had given it to Patrick on the day of our closing and it finally seemed like a nice night to have it. At this point we felt "settled" into the house - I mean, look, we were able to use the pasta roller - and it felt like the perfect time to celebrate a little.

If you're interested in some of our other attempts and recipes that we enjoyed, here are some quick - Spinach pasta with cherry tomatoes, Straw and hay pasta, Fettucine with wild mushrooms, and (one of our first attempts) Beet pasta and cheese ravioli.