Wednesday, January 15, 2003


crank/no crank day

as i mentioned the other day, i ordered the pasta roller attachment for my kitchen aid stand mixer. and today it arrived. it was good news in the nick of time too -- work had been one of those days. i was a tad cranky.

to my surprise, it's actually 3 heads, not one: a roller, and 2 cutters; one for linguini, the other for fettucini. they're substantial. heavy duty. non-dishwasher safe! in fact, you have to clean them with a brush and a toothpick. they look exactly as if the evil child phil from toy story had cut off the heads of several hand-crank pasta machines.

come evening, i hopped by the store, picked up some eggs, and thought to make an experimental batch of dough. i understand you have to waste a batch to clean the packing dust out of the heads, so that's what i planned to do. buying the terrifyingly expensive fresh pasta from the gourmet store will soon be a thing of the past.

i mean, 4 cups of italian 00 flour costs US$0.75; 4 organic eggs, US$1. a pound of pasta made at home is thus about US$2; bought at the store, US$6! it oughta be a crime, as we say here in brooklyn. . .

cannelloni alla partenopea, i'm on my way! as for that pappardelle with boar sauce, i understand from elizabeth david that if you marinate pork in juniper berries and red wine for a few days you can passably imitate the flavor of wild boar. (if you think i'm nuts on this -- hey! at least i'm not alone!)

but life does happen. i arrived home to discover that the building's boiler had burst, meaning we had no heat or hot water on an unusually frigid day. the super sadly reported that the boiler needed a part from jersey -- possibly a day and a half to repair.

and then i discovered one of the few foodtv chefs i can endure, alton brown, was doing a new show on -- you guessed it -- making fresh pasta. so with the oven turned on (for heat) i bundled up on the couch with the tomcat (living body warmer) and watched alton destroy an ironing board in the name of homemade ravioli.

so emboldened, i fastened these heavy pasta heads onto the nose of the kitchen aid. surprisingly, that little thumbscrew holds 'em on pretty well. i examined the heads more carefully -- the roller head has 8 thickness settings, just as most of the hand-crank ones do. the adjustment knob, which you have to pull out and twist, seems a bit stiff; it won't slip on you when you have the motor running. all good.

but by this time it was too late to actually make a test batch and i retreated to the bedroom, where i curled up in a nest of blankets with my anatomy of hatha yoga. test pasta may have to wait until saturday afternoon. . .

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