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French Cooking Class - Pasta

Fresh pasta is definitely not hard to make but it's a lot more time consuming than opening a box of dried stuff and pouring it into a pot of boiling water. We made two types of pasta a yellow pasta and a semolina pasta. The yellow pasta is literally all purpose flour and egg, while the semolina pasta got semolina and AP flour, eggs, salt and olive oil. This pasta is a little tougher than the yellow pasta.

We made a bolognese with beef and pork, a carbonara with cream, eggs and bacon, a spinach cheese ravioli and a shiitake mushroom pasta sauce.

This class was definitely busy rolling sheets of pasta and making sauces so there was no time to run around taking pictures except when I sat down to enjoy some of the fruits of labor of 8 people. I thought the carbonara or the mushroom sauces would be my favorite but oddly enough it was the bolognese.


If you've never tried making fresh pasta, I would encourage you to try it at least once. And this is something that if you want to go the extra mile to impress a date then making fresh pasta is going to do that. It can be made ahead but fresh pasta dries out very, very quickly so after cutting your pasta make sure you cover it with a damp towel to keep it fresh then cook it closer to mealtime. That way you'll have at least an hour to clean up your kitchen.
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