This morning (after sleeping in from a long night with the little one), I had promised that I would make pasta with our oldest daughter. We also had some duck breast that needed to be used, as it was bought yesterday right on the use by date (who can resist a 50% discount?) and some tasty looking corn. However, it would be the pasta making that would be the little highlight of the meal!

We (my daughter and I) have made pasta in the past, but she was complaining that it was quite some time since we had done it. So, it is a pretty easy thing to do, and the pasta is so much nicer than the dried pasta!

The recipe

The recipe that we use is a pretty simple one:

2 cups of flour
3 eggs
2 tablespoons of oil
a pinch of salt
tablespoon of water as needed

The pasta making

Measuring out the the flour and dumping it into a mixing bowl was the first thing to do. I should have thought ahead and used a flour sifter, but I was pretty tired so I completely forgot! Oh well, potentially slightly lumpy pasta in the making (although, in the end, it proved to be okay!).

Adding the salt is always one of the favourite bits. She keeps trying to hide the fact that she doesn't put it all in the bowl and tries to get away with licking it off her palm. I guess a little bit can't hurt, but I know she is dong it...

I had just been in France for a concert, and as always, I stock up on food, wines and lots of nice stuff (going there with a nearly empty suitcase). One of the things that I had brought back this time was this lovely nut oil. I really smells nice, my daughter seemed to think it smelled like fresh bread! Anyway, it was a nice chance to add it to the pasta dough.

Cracking the eggs... my wife always lets her do it, but this is the first time for me!

Hmmmm... I should trust her more, perfect egg cracking, no shells in the dough!

Mix Mix Mix! I hate doing this part, when it at the start of the mixing, it is really sticky and it gets all over and through your fingers. Lucky there was someone else that was willing and keen to do it!

Well, after the sticky bit is done, then I do the kneading. She didn't want to do this very much anyway, and was keen to get as much of the dough off her hands as possible! I was happier to take over when the dough wasn't as sticky! Win-Win!

After letting it sit for a little bit (I'm not sure why, probably to let the dough mature a bit... or to think about the meaning of being a dough), it is time to use the pasta machine. Unfortunately, the table we have doesn't fit the clamp, which makes it a pain in the arse as the machine moves around while you turn the crank.

...but I was feeling in a particularly inventive mood today, and we jury rigged a solution with the kiddie chair!

In an unusual moment of forethought, I decided it would be nice to take advantage of the good weather and we could do it outside. Also with the added bonus of keeping the mess outside!

After many runs through progressively thinner rollers, it was time to cut the pasta... leading to:

Home made PASTA!

The rest of the dinner

This next bit wasn't really for little girls, so I continued onwards with the cooking whilst she perfected her cartwheeling!

Duck and Corn! This is going to make for a nice summer meal!

The duck was just cooked in it's own fat along with lime juice and bit of salt and pepper. It was going to be cut up and mixed into the pasta anyway, so that's why I decided to cook it in strips rather than as a whole breast.

The original dinner plan did call for some fresh capsicum (paprika) on the side... but we had a thief.

The best thing about fresh pasta is that it cooks in a minute or two in the salted boiling water. In fact, you have to be a little watchful as you don't want to overcook it into a gluggy mess.

I'm not a good one for presentation, but here is the end result, which we ended up combining with a nice French cidre (more loot from the tour!). Well, I had cidre, my wife is still feeling under the weather, and the kids turn into nasty drunks...

Dessert

I would say that every dinner should have a dessert of some sort (I know my wife disagrees on this...), and this evening we rounded it all off with some tinned Lychees (I'm too lazy to peel them in the evening!) and nice vanilla ice-cream!