Bellissima! Part 2

Yesterday I posted about Little Miss and I having a girly shopping day on Saturday at our local Craft Village in "Bellissima!Part 1". Well, on Sunday the whole family went on a pasta-making workshop also in the Craft Village. Little Man was very distressed, he doesn't like new things, and really didn't want to go, however you'll be relieved (I was) to hear that he LOVED it. As did all of us.
The pasta-making takes place at a large table in the middle of the shop. Customers come and go at the same time, so its a bit of a spectator sport, but none of us minded and it certainly created lots of chat!

Each of us had a bag containing 100g of durum wheat flour. We tipped it directly onto the table and made a well in the middle, into which we poured two spoonfuls of tepid water....

.... and then gently mixed in the flour until the water was all soaked up ...

We repeated this process 3 or 4 times until we had added between 6 and 8 spoonfuls of water and the mixture formed a nice soft squidgy non-sticky dough. We tested it by poking it with a finger and seeing it spring back.

Here are my 3 Little Chefs, dressed for the part,smiles all round

We put the dough to one side and left it to rest while we had a refreshment break ..... squash for the Little People ... (and Daddy who was driving)

.... and wine for Mummy - don't mind if I do .... plus rosemary crostini for us all ....sooooo delicious

Since having the children, having a glass of wine in the middle of the day has become a very rare event, so I felt extremely decadent, and had that on-holiday-nothing-in-the-world-to-do-except-relax feeling ...looooovely !

Snacks and drinks consumed, soon we were back to the pasta making.
We split the dough in two with a knitting needle (yay, there HAD to be a yarny connection somewhere)

... I can't exactly remember why it was a knitting needle (remember I'd had the wine by this point) but I think Jackie was demonstrating how to make spirals around it. We decided it was more fun chopping with it.

Once mostly chopped in half we pulled it apart like so ....

Now came the fun part - using the past machine ......we had to feed in the piece of dough and turn the handle to flatten it out, a bit like a pasta mangle .....

This part took the longest, each piece of dough had to be rolled about 10 times, getting thinner and thinner as we set the rollers closer and closer together.

Then the SUPER fun part ....  we got to feed the dough into a sort of play-doh attachment ....

... oooo!!! look!! Tagliatelle!

"Perfecto!" as Little Man kept saying. He was so funny, he kept putting on an Italian accent and saying "Expresso Pasta!". When he found out expresso was a type of coffee he thought it was very funny :)

We also used a little crinkle cutter to make rectangle which we then nipped in to make bows ..... 

... and we used another play-doh attachment to make angel-hair pasta...

.... our final plates of fresh pasta (plus a very messy table)....

Off home we then went (no clearing up to do - hurrah), with our pasta shapes in bags, clutching a brand new shiny pasta machine and a bag of durum wheat flour. We'd decided to treat ourselves to the machine so we can have fun making past at home.

We had the workshop pasta for dinner that evening, I am truly amazed that flour and water (note there were no eggs in this recipe) actually stayed together when boiled, it's a miracle that it doesn't all just dissolve into gloop. We were so eager to eat the end result that I forgot to take any photos of it! But we all enjoyed it with a little bit of tomato and basil sauce, a fresh salad and a sprinkle of cheese! Bellissima!

ps. I am pleased to report that I have since used our new pasta machine at home - it was a roaring success so the first lot wasn't just beginner's luck - phew!