EYE OF TOBIA PHOTOGRAPHY BLOG

Documenting, sharing and musing about photography (and life with small children)

Pasta making has become a favorite of D’s. And this week with all of our new CSA shares to experiment with, we decided to try making some lasagna from scratch (or from knead, squeeze, pinch, roll, and shape) Pasta is incredibly easy to make. Flour and eggs. That’s it. I tend to be a little wishy-washy when it comes to measurements (why I seem unable to bake) so I included a real pasta recipe from Jamie Oliver

Basically what I do is have D put some flour in a bowl (about 2 cups) and then 2-3 eggs and combine, then kneed. If it is crumbly add a few drops of water, if it is sticky add a bit more flour. Then there is a resting phase. 30 min covered to let the glutens do what glutens may when they are left unsupervised. I don’t ask questions.
After we emptied the dishwasher (love that D still thinks it is a great game-how long can this last?) I split dough up into 4-5 pieces and hand to D to do the rest. She puts it through machine. Cranks it, mushes it back together, repeats until I loose patience and encourage her move on to making it thinner and thinner. Then we cut the pasta it into longish squarish pieces and throw into boiling water to parboil. 2 min and drain. By the time one was done the next was be ready to go in. We laid them out on a plate and started arranging the other ingredients. The greens (spinach and chard) were sauteed with onion and garlic and pinch of salt. D put some layers of cheese on. Then we repeated with more pasta and some mushroomy layers. We luckily had more dough than we needed, so D made it into her favorite activity- play doh. She spent 40 minutes with same little piece and G was working on his train set unencumbered by any meddlesome siblings. This allowed for the rest of dinner to come together quite nicely. This is not the usual scenario in our home for dinner prep.

I made the mushroom layer with a number of dried and fresh mushrooms reduced with wine and tomatoes. The kids liked everything but the greens. I didn’t chop them small enough. But they did eat most of it regardless.