Oh, my little noodle.

I love making pasta. I love it.

(I made my first pasta last night. Does it show?)

Lordy. I do love it. Pasta is the first flour-related item that has ever come together in my hands as if by instinct. I was a new little spider spinning my first web. I just knew what to do. This is a first.

When I was a kid, most everything in the house was a frozen/canned/boxed delight. (Full disclosure: Despite my "cook it all yer darned self from scratch" tendencies, I still love this kind of food. So much so that I avoid the frozen foods aisle when I happen to frequent a Loblaws.) Which means that I come with no acquired kitchen lore. Kids who never did a lick of cooking but whose moms or dads whizzed around the kitchen licking spoons and dipping fingers in sauces seem to have a grasp of basics that I do not have. Everything I've learned, I've learned by rote. With trials and errors, because I always think I've got a knack for cooking. But I don't.

So I was terribly intimidated by the thought of making pasta (sure it would wind up a flop of playdough sitting on my kitchen table, glaring back at me balefully). But I was on such a roll yesterday, I just kind of decided to give it a whirl. At nine o'clock at night. After having spent seven hours cooking kind of randomly.

And so. I read here and there, I tried to get my head around it. But the words didn't mean much.

Except.

Except when push came to shove, I knew exactly how much flour to add to my little ball. I just kept adding it and adding it and presto! It was right. It was just right.

My kneading leaves something to be desired--maybe a slightly higher table would help--but after a slightly protracted kneading time, things seemed to be working out beautifully.

Except.

Except when I was ready to move on to the rolling out the dough step, I realized that basically everyone out there was saying that you have to be some kind of masochist to roll out your dough by hand. They were basically saying I was crazy and I should just run out to a 24-hour pasta machine store, or throw in the towel then and there. I started to get really scared. But then I said, you jerk. You bought that lovely rolling pin and it's just sitting there, pining away. Look at it, so sad and lonely. It's never even been oiled. (I always suspected I should oil it or something, but never received confirmation until I was doing my research for the hand rolling. Thanks to Marcella Hazan, of course.)

So finally I just threw in the research towel, literally said, "The hell with it," rolled up my sleeves (figuratively here) and got to work.

It initially seemed like those naysayers were right. My little ball wanted to stay a ball. It certainly didn't want to stretch or pull or flatten or any of the things you want pasta to do.

But then, after a couple of minutes, it seemed like maybe it did. Like maybe there was a flat sheet of pasta trapped inside the hulk of dough. I felt like Rodin. "The pasta is already in the dough. I just let it out."

And then, magically, there was.

And it was beautiful.









(And also delicious.)