Can you believe that I have been the proud owner of a pasta maker for five whole months and it's only now that I've actually used it? I kept looking at it, thinking of all of the delicious pastas that I wanted to try out, yet there it sat. It was just crying out to be used and I ignored it.
This year has been one of the busiest times of my life. I've hardly had time to do my laundry, nonetheless hand make pasta. With trying to complete two projects at work, visiting boyfriend every other weekend in NJ and searching for a job, almost every minute has been spoken for. Buying storebought pasta just seemed like the easy thing to do.
Last week I decided to ignore the calls of the pasta maker no more! I was going to make one of my favorite pasta dinners and I would make the tortellini! With a DVR full of shows from the past two weeks, I set out on the journey of making my tortellinis. It was fun! It was easy! It was not a short process. First I made the pasta dough (same one I used in this recipe), then I stirred together the filling, then it was time to roll.
I secured the pasta maker to the countertop. It's a heavy little guy, but you still need to clamp it to your countertop in order to roll out the dough. So I rolled and rolled the dough, slowly closing the wheels to get a thinner and thinner dough.
I stamped out litle circles using my trusty 2-inch biscuit cutter.
I added a 1/2 tsp of filling to the circle...
Folded it over and went pinch pinch pinch to close...
Then pinched them in the center. Not exactly what a tortellini is supposed to look like, but I thought they looked cute this way. Then I set them on a baking sheet and into the fridge they went. Overnight they sat and dried out.
The next day I had adorable little tortellinis.
See, aren't they cute!
Then I boiled them up with some asparagus and yellow peppers, tossed them in dressing and I had dinner! Phew, quite the process, but totally worth it. I'm looking forward to trying out other filling recipes, fresh pasta is just the best.