For the full Tweety Conversation pulled together by Lynne using Storify click here : Twitter Tagliatelle Tutorial
My abbreviated version with mainly Carla’s tweets and photos – loads quicker or if you have a slow connection – click here) of the tutorial on Twitter that Carla gave us yesterday on making pasta with the Imperia pasta machine. I was given this wonderful gadget as a birthday present last year by my lovely sister and this was its first outing. I had borrowed one last year from Mitch who lives in Bristol but there was something lacking in our technique the one time we tried and we felt a bit out of our depth, so when Carla, expert chef, (in Rome) offered to teach me yesterday, I jumped at the chance!
I could write it all out here as a post but that doesn’t give the feeling of the fun of doing this yesterday and this way you get to see all Carla’s wonderfully detailed photos and read her instructions. She is a fantastic tutor and I feel really confident now that I can do this again!
Lynne, who tweets as @josordoni, another Twitter friend of Gibassier fame, has kindly spent some time to make the Storify story. I had a try at using Storify, but left out my own tweets. Lynne joined in and made the noodles by hand, an act of great determination!
I served the tagliatelle with chestnut mushrooms, onion, parsley, and a sauce of Charvroux goats cheese and some Serrano ham
So thank you Carla and thank you Lynne so very much for the company and the joy of sharing. You are both such kind and generous friends and I wonder daily at this world where one can be friends with people who one has never met in person and have such fun.
Have a lovely weekend!
My pasta was made with
- 3 eggs weighing about 140g unshelled
- 150 g of 00 Italian flour
- 150g of Semonlina Rimacinata flour (the finely milled durum wheat, which has a fine slightly gritty feel)
- 1 tbsp of water
- and a lot of love from Carla
Zeb Bakes 
I have never attempted homemade pasta. Peder has – a group team building thingie that he did many years ago. Perhaps with this lovely video, we’ll try it here!
Misky, I am afraid it isn’t a video but a series of tweets all collated together. Lots of fine detail about how to fold the pasta to make the right shape to go through the machine correctly and how to control it in general, the sort of stuff that tends to flummox me :)
Ah. I was reading your post on my iPad, so hadn’t viewed the video yet. Thought I’d do so on a larger screen. Lovely looking meal you made there! :)
Oh, that last picture melted my heart! Reminded me of our late dalmatian, who would patiently sit near the pasta machine and wait. Great canine vacuum cleaner he was, no flour left behind! :-)
Too bad Twitter did not “take” for me. But it’s fun to see what can be done with it…. your pasta looks awesome, but most important than that is all the fun you had making it!
I remember your lovely dog and his passion for pasta. Zeb couldn’t stand still for this one, I took three or four shots and he just vibrated with anticipation :)
Lovely looking pasta. Having made a couple of batches recently (my 8YO has a hidden talent for making Ravioli!) I was reminded how economical it is as a little really does go long way.
Have fun with your machine
Tony
maybe we should ask your 8 year old for a ravioli tweetorial? I hope I will get faster with practice :)
It was huge fun! and the hand made pappardelle I made was delicious!! I will write up myself later, and let you have the link xx
That will be lovely! Your handmade pasta was very impressive xx
Oh- to have a machine!
I make noodles and pasta by hand- it takes a lot of time and muscle!
Yours are lovely- and it is fun to cook along with someone else out there in the world!
I think there are secondhand ones to be had, as I am sure people buy them, use a few times and then don’t have time to make. But if you have the knack of doing by hand then maybe you don’t need one. I was surprised that 200g flour made so much pasta, plenty for the two of us. (100g was used to run through the machine to make sure it had no factory bits in the rollers) as it was new.
Tagliatelle – in honour of Lucretzia Borgia’s hair(?) That’s 8mm wide by law(!) …in Bologna.
I was intrigued by your comment so had a look on Wikipedia they said the ‘gold ‘ standard for tagliatelle in Bologna was 6mm. As this is an Italian machine I can only hope :-))))
LOVE LOVE LOVE homemade pasta. I have only made it about a dozen times and it is well worth making. Yours looks wonderful. My fav is adding dried basil in as I make the pasta and eating with just melted butter and salt.
I must try thst with the basil and make more pasta very soon :)
I can just visualise Zeb vibrating! Spot spins when he is very excited – I think that may be the Jack Russell in him. I’ve made pasta ages ago but it doesn’t seem worth the bother for one – tho’ i suppose it might freeze? I do make gnocchi occasionally and that freezes quite well.
Zeb spins to reward us when he finally getx a message through to human central and walks backwards too. Yes you can freeze pasta and It is labour intensive I agree. What recipe do you do for your gnocchi, Ann?
Just realised it is cavatelli I’ve been making, not gnocchi. I got the recipe from the internet and have emailed a link to you. I only make half the quantity and still have plenty to freeze. (I’m sure it is possible to put a link on here but I don’t know how!)
Edit : Here is your link for the cavatelli recipe on Food Network.
The method looks similar to gnocchi, do thry look similar? , they sound excellent, I must try them and if they freeze well that is good news – thanks Ann xx
They are very similar to gnocchi. I believe the name means little carriages and they hold sauce well because of the curled shape. The recipe states AP flour but I might try using Italian – easy to come by here as there are lots of Italian delis. I freeze them on a tray and then bag them up into single helpings which makes for a quick and easy supper.
I have now been able to read the whole tutorial with your new link – what fun!
I should test these links better but sometimes what works from one computer doesn’t work in another, It was an experiment on my part. Will definitely try making them soon. Zeb refusing to move from bed, needs a walk before trip to groomers :-))
Sent from my iPhone
What beautiful looking pasta and that’s a great looking pasta machine xx
We got there in the end, semolina dust everywhere !
Lovingly, well made tagliatelle, Joanna. I can’t quite see all the conversation on storify I’m afraid. But bakealongs are great fun. Pasta does freeze well, I leave it at the ball stage and douse it in masses of flour as it goes through the machine.
I also sometimes loop the pasta into one continuous “belt”. And crank down the numbers, whilst winding, without having to feed again.
I think maybe Lynne’s version is so big that it takes a while to load all the pictures. The one I did had mainly Carla’s tweets and photos, the tutorial part if you like. I wonder if you can see that better ? http://storify.com/Zeb_Bakes/making-tagliatelli-a-carla-tomasi-tweetorial
Are you saying you freeze it at the ball stage? I am fascinated at the idea of doing it on a loop, like when you wind wool I imagine :)
Exactly so, Joanna, just like wool. I don’t always do it, but it is a little easier to manage, that is if your ball isn’t to big.
I’ve got a slideshow of how to refresh it. You leave it for 3 hours comfortably covered in flour. (don’t know if I can post links here: https://picasaweb.google.com/112770427412470290342/HomeMadePastaFromFrozen#slideshow/5308140995405177634)
And yes, that link is better. I get the image loads. Ta!
Great photos Gill! Your pasta looks wonderfully thin and silky – and you used the same flour as me, that is the one that Carla said was a good one. Glad you could see the pics xx Jo
Hello Joanna,
I have been trying pasta by hand recently and really wondered if the imperia pasta maker would be a good investment. Doing pasta by hand is great on a wet sunday when nobody can go outside but for a quick meal, the machine would be better: you are really tempting me. And your post on lemons !!!: I can smell the delicious lemons from here…Anne MC
Hi Anne! I don’t know if it is a good investment, I guess yes if it is something you would use often. I borrowed Mitch’s first and I wanted one so it was on my wish list :) The lemons were lovely, we are eating our way through the curds and have a small stash of marmalade in the cupboard now. Keeo warm x
Loved! Felt like a little fly on the wall…should have landed on that pasta and taken a little bite!
It was a bit of an epic but such fun, I really feel like I know what to do now. Would love to make pasta for you to nibble :)
Oh, what fun, to make pasta yourself!! I dream of doing that too someday myself. I don’t know if it is better to have the manual pasta roller or an attachment for the KitchenAid. Do you know?
It is harder to find the proper flour over here to make pasta with I think.
I just love the picture of Zeb reaching for the piece of Tagliatelle. Every good dog deserves a nice treat like that!
Hi Mel, Thane Prince, who is a journalist and cook book author, said on Twitter that she had the pasta roller attachment for the Kitchen Aid and it worked very well for her. So if you have a KA I would go for that. I don’t know where to go for Italian style flour in the US, does KAF do it? Maybe someone on the Fresh Loaf or Paul on Mellow Bakers? We are having a sort of Twitter bake get together on the last Sunday of this month, with a theme of Italian carnival baking, do you fancy playing along? Or anyone else reading this for that matter? The idea is to make some sweet Italian inspired tea time treat and virtually share, it is very informal. See you on Twitter xx
oh, and btw Carla has asked me to storify the italian Twittercakebake
Lovely!
Sure, I’ll do my best to play along, and pray that my stupid neck & head cooperates. I’ll talk at ya onTwitter later xx
I hope you can, but even if you just join in with the chat that’s cool too. xx
I ached a bit after the pasta making; we attached the pasta machine to the dog table and it lifted up and down a bit. So we took it in turns to hold it down :) But I have now found a better place which won’t move for next time :)
Hi Mel, Bob’s Red Mill make proper pasta flour, you can get it online
I am still tossing up between buying an attachment for my mixer or a hand cranked one. I think the electric one may win out. I still feel like I ought to have three hands for the pasta and another for steadying the machine with the hand cranked one!
Thank you Lynne!! Yes, there is the problem of a good place to affix the hand cranked one. I once saw Alton Brown attach it to an old ironing board, which I thought seemed kind of silly
I have owned an Italian made Atlas pasta machine for many years, and I love it! Apart from having to buy a new plastic (the entire rest of the machine is metal!!!) tightening handle, the machine has performed flawlessly all these years (OK, so I don’t use it daily!), and I have always marveled at the engineering of this little masterpiece (not quite enough to push me to buying a Fiat, but, it is a marvelous machine) – sadly, I hear they are now made in China. For anyone who owns one of these made in Italy, you know that there is a certain mystic romance that enshrouds one each time you begin the pasta making experience. And I’m quite sure the Chinese have not stolen that too.
I think loads of people have them and don’t use them every day, but it is so good to know that one can make ones own if one wants to. I am going to pretend mine was made in Italy, I think it was but I haven’t scrutinized the box that closely. Thanks for reading the Storify as well :)
If the machine in your top pic is yours, then it was made in Italy!
I only put mine and Brian’s pics on the blog, and maybe a very small number which are copyright free and I credit the sources, so yes it’s mine! Mi Imperia! Yes it says made in Italy – gosh I am stupido sometimes :)
just about everything in the world is made in China so not surprising you expected the pasta machine to be made there too!!
I didn’t think that :) I assumed it was made in Italy and then I read Doc’s comment and I wasn’t sure. Sometimes things are not what they seem at first glance.