Thursday, July 19, 2012

Gluten Free Pasta

We all love pasta and going gluten free can be a bit daunting here.  Yes I know, you can buy gluten free pasta in the health isle of the supermarket and at heath shops, but I find they lack flavour and just don't taste right.   The thought of making my own pasta was a little daunting too.  It just seemed so complicated and time consuming.  I was at Aldi one day and they had a little pasta machine for $10 and I thought, maybe I should give it a go.  So I scoured the internet for recipes and spoke to my sister who put me on to a recipe from the food website.  She had made a few modifications to make it a little easier.  Here is the result.

1 cup Gluten Free Flour (orgran)
1 cup Cornflour
9 ts Xanthan Gum
6 Large Eggs
3 tbs Oil

Put it all in your bench mixer with dough hooks and let it knead it until smooth

Wrap in cling wrap and place in fridge for 2 hours.

Divide into manageable pieces.  On a floured bench, roll or press dough pieces out flat and then follow the directions on your pasta machine.  Usually you would start at the widest setting (9 on mine) and then drop it by one on each pass.  I actually feed it through twice on each setting.  I stop at about setting 4 as I find this is a good thickness and if I go much further it starts to tear.  TIP:  Keep the pasta well floured between passes to stop it sticking

Now you can decide what to make it into.  I like the Tagliatelle setting on my machine but I plan on making some ravioli next time.  You can pretty much use this recipe for fettuccine, spaghetti, lasagne, ravioli, whatever you like.

Leave it on the bench to dry for an hour or so and then cook till done.  Depending on the type of pasta it could take 7-12 minutes.  Lasagne still needs about 30minutes in the oven.  Any leftover I wrap up in freezer bags in meal size portions and freeze.  That way I have some on hand for a quick meal.

For the Ravioli filling you can use your imagination to come up with some nice combo's, Spinach and Ricotta, or a meat sauce (not a wet runny meat sauce, it needs to be a little bit firm/dry) are both good options.   My sister likes  ricotta, leek, parmasen, salt, pepper and parsley which I really must try.  Experiment with flavours, If you come up with a good one please share it with my readers by commenting below.  

A really basic sauce I use sometimes is a tomato based sauce.  

1 onion  and a clove of garlic chopped and gently fried in  a little oil.  Add a tin of tomatoes and heat.  Tear up some fresh basil and add at the last minute with some salt and pepper to taste and serve with your pasta. If you have some gluten free meatballs they go lovely in this sauce.

My advise is don't be intimidated by pasta making. It seems much more complicated than it really is.  Go on give it a go.  Let me know how you went.

And the best bit, no gluggy heavy feeling after eating it. :)

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