Tagliatelle with Cherry Tomatoes

  I was staring at a bowl of freshly harvested cherry tomatoes this morning and trying to figure out what to do with all of them -- far too many if just left for your basic salad.  So I decided to make a pici pasta (a simple pasta with only flour, water & salt -- akin to Japanese Udon).  But then I didn't feel like hand rolling the individual pieces of pici -- besides rolling out and cutting the pasta dough into thin strips, you then roll out each strip to make a longer one. Better to do that when you have help.

  Plus -- since learning how to make tagliatelle from scratch on a recent trip to Tuscany, I had been wanting to make it at home -- the way I did it there.  A few weeks ago, I made the dough for tagliatelle -- basically the same as all pasta dough (flour, eggs, salt) -- but instead of hand rolling and cutting, I used an ancient manual pasta rolling/cutting "machine" in our cupboard that, I think, was a wedding gift 30 years ago.   It was OK but not the same.

  Having picked up a piece of plywood and a pasta rolling pin (mattarello) a few weeks ago, it seemed like a good time to try out the technique learned 6 weeks ago.

   First, I set up my plywood and got my ingredients -- "00" flour, eggs & salt

  It took about 5 mins or so to mix it together and knead the dough.  Then I wrapped it in plastic and let it sit for 30-45 mins.  Then it was time to roll it out

After repeating a technique of rolling it out, wrapping it around the pin, violently rolling it towards me and then rotating...  it was time to cut:

 A neat little trick to unfold the pasta and set it out to dry

  I let it sit out for a while and, when it was time, boiled some water and went about preparing my "sauce".

  The sauce was super easy -- a decent amount of olive oil heated up, added garlic, red pepper flakes, and thyme and cooked on hi for a minute or two.  Added a bunch of quartered (fresh from the garden!) cherry tomatoes, basil, marjoram, salt & pepper and let it cook for a few minutes.  Added a little pasta water and my now cooked pasta and served.

  It was delicious.  It only took me about 5 minutes to make the pasta dough and about 10-15 minutes to roll it out and cut it.  The sauce took no more than 10 minutes.  So easy and so much better than anything I could have gone out to get!!