Last Sunday it was cold and rainy and I felt like cooking something warm and hearty and wanted to make the most of a pasta maker a friend lent me. It was exactly like the one I used in Italy which was a relief, as I would at least know how to use it. Thankfully I still had some ‘00′ Semolina flour left from when I made pizza last week, so I didn’t have to go half way across Sydney to find it from an Italian deli or grocer.
I made the dough in no time, then kneaded, and kneaded, and kneaded…until it was finally a nice, smooth ball which wasn’t sticky and cut smoothly. Dividing it into balls I was certain I was going to make cabonara as my family love it, and best to go with that would be spaghetti. Once I had flattened my balls I put it through the spaghetti shredder to my horror, it came out completely stuck together. I then tried the dough through the thicker setting for tagliatelle thinking that it was the machine, and yes it turned out fine. I was however, mistaken….it was me, or what I wasn’t dong to my dough, it was not coated in enough flour, so after doing half the balls, I tried the spaghetti setting again, and sure enough, it worked fine.
I ended up with four portions of tagliatelle and four portions of spaghetti. Now if I learnt one thing in Italy, it was that different pastas go with different sauces, so I would indeed make two sauced tonight. For the spaghetti, the planned cabonara, but unlike how my mother does it, I will do it the proper way, with just eggs and pancetta, not cream. For the tagliatelle I know that it should have gone with a heavy meaty sauce, but I really felt lke a light and chunky sauce. So I chose to do a fresh tomato sauce with zucchini, onion and garlic. Simple and beautiful.
As usual, my Mother said it was ‘OK’, she has a hard palette to impress, far worse than any judge on Masterchef, but it was all worth it when at the end of the dinner my Dad said to me “Nice dinner Princess”, which put a huge smile on my face 
For the full recipe and method click here
