Tomatelle? Fuck Yes!

I can hear your thoughts: "Jesus fuck. Another goddamn pasta post? Shut up and deep fry a Guinea Pig or something."

OK. As much as I enjoy doing shit like deep frying guinea pigs, I have to also come to terms with the fact that the most popular post on Grocery Guy is the fruit crisp recipe because a) A-train is a better writer than I am and b) an easy way to get laid is baking tasty shit for people who think that stuff is hard.

Right.

So, anyway, pasta that comes out of a box can only be so good and that fresh fancy shit will send even a high-roller like the Grocery Guy to the poor house if you try to eat that shit very often.

But then again, if you don't eat fancy pasta, how will you woo the ladies?

What we all (and by all I mean me too) forget is that pasta is poor people food and, as we all know, poor people are poor because they're stupid, not because anyone has a vested interest in keeping them down, so pasta must be really easy to make.

Guess what? It's easier than easy to make. Almost un-fuck-up-able, actually. Not only that but chicks (or dudes or, you know, whoever.) will think you're a fucking astro-physicist because you can make the best fresh pasta they ever ate in 10 minutes while drinking wine and saying clever things.

How the fuck does that happen you may well ask?

Easy

1 Cup All-purpose Flour

1 Egg

1 Tablespoon Olive Oil

1-2 Tablespoons Cold Water

1/2 Teaspoon Salt

1/4 Cup Finely-fine-fine Minced Fresh Basil (or other herb)

Get a good sized bowl and combine the salt and the flour by whisking with a fork or something.

Now take your as yet uncracked egg and make a dent with it in the middle of the flour pile. Crack your egg into the divot, add the oil and the herbs and then thrash the hell out of the whole deal with a fork.

At this point you can either make a sexy "concentrating artist" face or be the "funny, nebbishy guy" and rub some flour on your dinner date's nose or some cute Annie Hall shit like that. Just don't end up accidentally poking the object of your amorous intentions in the eye with a fingerfull of flour. Also, be realistic about whether or not you can pull off the sexy artist face. If you read this site chances are pretty high that you might be better served by the goofy nebbish routine.

Anyway, once the whole deal is kind of flakily hanging together and well mixed add some water. Just enough to make it into a nice elastic piece of dough.

At this point you should be mixing with your hands. Like how kissing leads to fucking, mixing will lead to kneading... your pasta dough. Knead by folding the dough in half and then pressing on it with your palm. You may want to dust your cutting board with some flour and really get into it for the sake of showing what a passionate cook you are. Well, that and you're going to need to knead the thing for about 4-6 minutes so get comfortable.

Done? Great, now wrap the proto-pasta in plastic wrap or wax paper and throw in the fridge for 30 minutes to rest and let the glutens (the elastic proteins in the flour that will make your pasta toothsome and un-biscuitlike) develop.

Now would be a good time to start the water (3 quarts with a couple of tablespoons of salt) boiling and heat up some sauce. You could make your own or modify a jar brand. I'll have a post coming up about making your own tomato sauce from fresh overripe tomatoes but for an error-free dinner date night I would recommend getting a small jar of nice sauce (Rao's or [if you can find it] Star, an Italian grocery store brand) and adding some capers and some olive tapenade to it. Do this before the person comes over so they will think that you made the whole thing.

OK so now the sauce is hot, the water near to the boil and the pasta dough has been in the refer for 30 minutes.

Get rolling.

You'll need:

An empty wine bottle (the cabernet type not the slope shouldered chardonnay type)

1/2 cup of flour

A big knife or a pizza cutter

Now flour up the surface of your COMPLETELY DRY cutting board and flop down the ball in the middle of the flour. Rub some flour on your bottle suggestively and wink at your houseguest and begin to roll the blob out. Go ahead, use some flour. A lot of it. Make sure that the pasta is always well floured. As long as the dough is covered in a thin layer of flour nothing bad can happen. Try to make the blob into an even and roughly rectangular sheet of pasta. Shoot for 1/8 thick. Extra points for getting thinner but I wouldn't get too fancy until the next time they come over. Now take your cutter and square off the sheet by cutting of the roundish edges. Now cut the sheet into 1 inch wide strips. Now cut the strips into sections about 3-4 inches long. The length is whatever but be consistent so that shit looks good. More flour! Done.

All you have to do now is throw the pasta in the pot for about 4 minutes, drain and mix with the sauce and let it sit with the lid on for 3-4 more minutes. This will allow the pasta to finish cooking in the sauce which, you may guess, makes the pasta more better.

Simply plate and serve with some of that fancy $10 South African cabernet. Mention that it's from South Africa.

Who loves you baby?