More homemade pasta

 I have one piece of kitchen equipment that I don't use often enough.  This would be my pasta machine.

There she is, in all her glory!!  She was a birthday gift from Nonna the same year that Hubs proposed.  It was a good day.

As much as I scoff at Giada De Laurentiis' macrocephalic bobblehead and overuse of cleavage as a way to increase male viewership, I have to admit that the woman has some good recipes.  I received a copy of her book, "Everyday Pasta", as a gift some years ago, and have been meaning to try her shortrib ragù recipe.  I had Jess and Kyle over for "cat orientation" prior to my holiday visit to Windsor, and used them as guinea pigs treated them to a scrumptious dinner as a thank you for looking after the fur babies.

Mmm.  Beef shortribs.  In all honesty, this marks the first time I've cooked with them.  Shameful, I know.

The ragù.  I LOVE that the beef simmers in this for TWO HOURS before being removed, shredded, and returned to the pot.  My kitchen smelled like a mamoni's fantasy world.  The recipe can be found here.  I also find it hilarious that this food writer (whom I've never met) also compares Giada to a dashboard ornament.  Glad I'm not the only one!!

On to the pasta.  Thanks to my wonderful aunt Lisa, I got Nonna's recipe: "2 1/2 cups of cake and pastry flour for 5 eggs or 4 eggs and 2 half eggshells full of water.  Add more flour as needed, probably about another cup or so. 5 eggs should be good for 5 or 6 servings but those are big servings. I think it's about 1 1/2 pounds of pasta"

Rollin'.  In the future, I think I'll make these one setting thicker.  They were just a liiiittle too thin to stand up to chunky meaty sauce!

So pretty :)

Finished product, topped with shaved pecorino romano.  Heavenly.

I also made parmesan popovers (they're in the blue bowl in the background), but I honestly didn't prefer them.  Kyle seemed to like them, so I gave him the leftovers.

Get that fork in there!! Delish.

Overall I was very pleased with the results (minus the popovers... I'm not even going to link you to the recipe).  Hubs, again, was jealous that he missed a good meat dish... lucky for him, I had enough ragù left over to freeze for another night.  It's just waiting for his arrival in this fair (and freezing!) city!

Thinking that an early April snowstorm might be a good excuse to serve up the leftovers,
-Honeybee