The art of… making green pasta dough

17 Feb

Freshly prepared green pasta dough infused with wild garlic, ready for cutting

In a world of convenience, I am going out of my way to do things slowly, even if, yes, my time could be used elsewhere. I could buy the ready-made-pasta and use my time for writing this blog post, or filing in invoices for my business, doing laundry or a million other adulting jobs.

How sad is that?

To think making something as beautiful as making pasta would be a waste of time, since this item (or a cheap copy) could be found on some shop shelves & isn’t valuable enough to claim my time and energy.

These aren’t words said to me directly - these were thoughts that crossed my mind the day I decided I wanted to spend the afternoon making pasta with wild garlic I foraged last year and was still in the freezer, and to capture images and videos as I do so. Years of making leather goods by hand have taught me so much about making things slowly and properly, and the way this is now almost an act of rebellion against this world of more, more, faster.

Everything has a price tag, a set value - except art. If I change my mindset, and look at cooking as an art form, then no, making green pasta dough isn’t a waste of time.

It’s a time of slow meditation, of skill practice in 3 mediums (photography, videography and the act of cooking from scratch) and, most importantly, a reminder that it is OK to take the long, quiet way instead of paying for the shortcut.

There is so much enjoyment in the slow process of preparing something at your own pace, and this is what artful living is about, in the end: taking the smallest task and turning it into something beautiful.

If you want to take a break from doom scrolling on an afternoon, and trying this out, you will find the recipe below. Don’t worry, you can substitute the wild garlic for spinach for the same result, and you can use a rolling pin & knife instead of a pasta machine. I’ll keep it short, with no over-explaining (but I’m happy to help if you have any questions about any of the steps).

Not interested? That’s fine. Check out the pictures or watch the video before you go!

Freshly prepared green pasta dough infused with wild garlic, drying on a wooden pasta drying rack

Fresh Green Pasta Recipe

Ingredients:

180g fresh spinach or wild garlic

2 eggs

300g flour

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

black pepper (optional)

a handful of semolina (skip this if you don’t have it)

Equipment:

A large bowl if you don’t want to knead straight on the table and make a mess, fork, pasta machine (or a rolling pin and a big knife if you don’t have one), a pasta drying rack, or the back of a chair covered with a clean tea towel, or any rack of sorts that you could dry the pasta on: cake cooling rack or a rack from the oven (cleaned) would do too. Get creative. Don’t let my fancy equipment fool you: I’ve been making pasta since childhood and didn’t have any equipment until last week

Process:

Wash & trim the leaves, removing big stems. Dry. In a pot of boiling water, blanch (boil) the leaves for 30 seconds, take them out in a colander and run them under cold water immediately to stop the boiling process. This will help maintain the boiling process and maintain the strong green color. In my case, I used wild garlic that I’ve blanched last year and din’t know about the cold water trick, so the leaves were a deep, dark green. Oh well.

Chop the leaves finely, or blend them if you have a machine to do so. I used a Kitchen Aid stick blender.

Liquids:

In the bowl with spinach, add the 2 eggs, olive oil and a pinch of pepper. Mix well, until you obtain a light green paste.

Mound the flour into the large bowl or on the table, if you’re confident you won’t spill the paste everywhere.

Make a well in the center and add the spinach mixture. Using the fork (or hands), slowly start mixing the ingredients by dragging heaps of flower over the green paste and twisting, careful not to break the walls of the flour well (if you’re kneading on the table).

Once the mixture gains a bit of consistency, start kneading by hand until you obtain a smooth ball of dough. Add more flour if the dough is still sticky. The dough should be soft, malleable and shouldn’t stick to the hands.

ingredients for making green pasta dough: olive oil, flour, eggs, wild spinach paste

cracking an egg over a bowl of Blanched wild garlic leaves blended into a smooth paste

adding condiments to a bowl of wild garlic pasta ingredients such as blanched and blended wild garlic leaves, eggs, salt and pepper

pouring olive oil in a mixture of blanched wild garlic leaves, blended into a smooth paste, eggs and pepper.

mixing the ingredients for wild garlic pasta dough using a fork

Mixing wild garlic paste with flour to form a vibrant green pasta dough

Mixing by hand wild garlic paste with flour to form vibrant green pasta dough and kneading the dough

Cover it with cling film or a lid, and let it rest for 20-30mins.

You can rest too, or clean the mess, if you didn’t use the bowl and got green paste everywhere (like it happened to me when I made pink pasta - recipe coming in a future post).

All rested? Good.

Now cut the dough into 4 and roll each piece into a ball. Flour it so it won’t be sticky where the dough was cut. This will prevent the dough from sticking to the machine.

If you roll by hand using a rolling pin: roll the dough into a thin sheet (about 3mm). Turn it on the other side repeatedly and sprinkle more flour if it starts to stick to the table. Repeat with all pieces until all dough has been stretched into thin sheets.
if you roll using the machine: flatten the dough ball with your hand and run it through the machine on the widest setting (number 1 on my machine). Repeat with all pieces of dough until you have 4 thick, oblong sheets of dough. Cut the sheets in half (otherwise you’ll end up with reaaaaaaly long tagliatelle).
Set the machine on a thinner sheet level (on my machine, number 4) and roll the dough again until all of it is stretched out into 3mm thick sheets.

Cutting the tagliatelle:

If you are cutting with a knife: sprinkle flour over the sheets of dough and hang them to dry or place them over dry tea/paper towels and let them rest for 15 minutes, so the dough will not stick at the next step
loosely roll each sheet and cut straight ‘slices’ that are approximately 8mm-1cm wide. Using your hands, slowly break apart the ‘slices’ that are actually rolled up tagliatelle now! (I do not have images of this process, but will try to update this next time I make pasta).
If you are cutting with the machine: roll each sheet through the tagliatelle or spaghetti section.

If you have semolina, sprinkle a generous handful over them so they won’t stick together. I had none, so I sprinkled flour and they’ve been ok, and the pasta police hasn’t yet visited me, so should be fine. Best used immediately, or stored in an airtight container overnight, or frozen… or dried overnight. I dried mine folded in half on a cool pasta rack I purchased recently, but as mentioned at the start of the recipe, any sort of rack would do, as long as it ensures air circulation above and underneath the pasta.

TIP: Cut the sheets into rectangles if you want to use the dough for lasagna sheets.

Cook as desired and enjoy guilt free, without stopping to think for a second about the calories amount, carbs, or what not. You’ve worked hard to make this pasta, savour it. Go back for a second helping. I won’t judge.