Image by JCarrot

Carla shared with us the ancient Italian secret of mixing pasta dough with a food processor. She promised us it created a perfectly luscious pasta noodle without the mess of the old “egg in a well of flour” method.

Carla kneaded flour into a batch of spinach dough, which we used to make linguine. (The water in the spinach made the dough a bit wet, so the extra flour evened things out.)

We used a pasta machine to thin out the mounds of dough into perfectly flat sheets. You can buy one here.

We filled our tortellini with a ricotta cheese and parsley mixture. The original plan was a pork and chicken mixture, but once Carla found out I was a vegetarian and Jewish she kindly switched the menu!

The first step to making tortellini is pressing the dough into a triangular packet around the filling. A little bit of water on the tips of your fingers helps seal the dough together.

Here are our beautiful tortellini! They look pretty authentic, no?

Basic Pasta Dough

This is not the exact dough recipe we used, but it’s from Gourmet, so I trust it completely!

2 cups flour

2 1/2 large eggs

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 to 2 tablespoons water

In a food processor blend all ingredients except water with a pinch salt until mixture begins to form a ball. If mixture is too dry, add enough water, a little at a time, to form a stiff dough.

On a lightly floured surface knead dough until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Pasta dough may be made 2 hours ahead and chilled, wrapped well in plastic wrap.

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