Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Making Pasta with Dave

Tonight Tom and I took a pasta making class at Dave's Fresh Pasta in Davis Square. Tom learned about the class through Slow Food Boston, an organization that runs counter-culture to "fast food nation" and promotes eating local.

The class, which held about a dozen people, was taught by Dave himself. We began by learning the basics of pasta making, creating a simple dough from flour (duram and semolina), egg and a pinch of salt. Tom scored well on the dough-kneading -- his was used as the "model" for the rest of us to follow. We left one ball of dough plain and added parsley to the other. After 20 minutes in the fridge, we rolled out the dough and sent them through the cutters, making both angel hair and linguini.

Dave then gave us a tutorial in sauce making, including a great, absolutely easy marinara sauce. Tom asked for a few pointers with his own garlic/white wine sauce, and Dave quickly identified the problem: not enough salt and/or cheese. What a difference it makes using the right quantities! He also made an alfredo sauce and a very cool sauce with blue cheese.

Next class in November is for raviolis -- we're hoping we'll be able to sign up!

1 comment:

Bhuvana said...

Sounds like an awesome class at Dave's and an interesting movement with Slow Food - we're trying to eat more local, non-processed food too, so we'll definitely check it out!