I have a lot of cooking ahead of me as I don’t have any food made yet. In the past this would have stressed me out but not this year. I’m looking forward to making passover popovers, spinach vegetable kugel, matzo meal pancakes, matzo brei and maybe a few of new things. I love passover. I need to go buy a couple of chickens. And a tube pan. It is very handy having Good Friday off from work. Lots to do tomorrow!

Way back in high school I got a hand-crank pasta roller and cutter set. I enjoyed making fresh pasta, but it was always kind of a pain dealing with the long sheets of dough in one hand and trying to crank the pasta roller with the other hand. I probably made fresh pasta 5 or 10 times, until one day in college I got the bright idea to use my pasta roller on some fimo clay and that was the end of that. It’s nearly impossible to get fimo clay out of a pasta roller.
I’d had my eye on the pasta roller attachment for the Kitchen Aid mixer for a long time. After I got married and had a couple of Macy’s gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, I bought the set. And then it sat on my shelf for 6 months. Or maybe longer. Ok, longer. You got me. In my head it seemed like fresh pasta was going to be this huge messy project, a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of thing. Well let me tell you, it was easy and not at all messy. Here’s the dough recipe:

Pepper Pasta
2 eggs
2 1/4 C King Arthur Unbleached AP flour
2 Tbsp water
1/4 tsp salt
lots of fresh ground pepper (I didn’t measure it)

Combine all ingredients in the workbowl of your mixer and mix together using the paddle blade. Once a dough forms, switch to the dough hook and knead for a couple of minutes. Form the dough in to a ball. You may want to knead by hand for an additional minute or two. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt the water once it’s boiling. Don’t salt the water before it boils or you’ll pit your pots. Seriously.

Set up the roller attachment on your KA mixer. Divide the dough in half. Roll one ball through on the largest setting, folding the dough and re-rolling 6 or 7 times. Once you have a smooth sheet, move the setting 1 notch smaller. Only roll the sheet through once per notch. Keep rolling on smaller settings until you have the thickness you desire. (I like it thin, 5 or 6). Let the sheet rest and roll out the other sheet.

Once both sheets were done, I used the fettuccine cutter to cut the pasta. I recently read a recipe that recommended letting the sheets rest for 15 minutes between rolling and cutting. I’ll have to give that a try next time. Once the pasta is cut, boil it off. It only takes 4 minutes or so to cook, so if you’re planning on having any sauce with your pasta, have it ready before you put the pasta in the water.