Ryan's Pasta Megapost (with some pictures)

All my fresh pasta follows this formula: 1 cup of flour + 2 extra large eggs = pasta dough. You can add up to 1 tbs of a vegetable powder like maccha or spinach powder. I use the Imperia brand pasta machine to make all my pasta sheets and the cutter attachment for fettucine.

Sauces:
Bolognese
1 lb 80/20 beef or pork mince
Bacon fat
Itallian seasoning
1 minced onion
1 minced large carrot
1 minced stalk of celery
2-4 cloves minced garlic
1 cup red wine
2 lbs roasted paste tomatoes
Basil, parsley, bay, thyme, ancho pepper powder to taste

Sauce Mornay
Butter and flour roux
Any milk
Shredded sheep or cow cheese
Make it like gravy and then melt in the cheese.

Pesto
Several handfulls of fresh basil
2 cloves crushed garlic
1/4 cup shelled and roasted sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds or nuts
Olive oil
Splash lemon juice
Grated hard cheese
Blend all together to form a paste.

Butternut Squash Sauce
1 butternut squash peeled, deseeded, and diced
Bacon fat
1clove minced garlic
Either itallian sausage spice mix OR garam masala to taste
Water to cover
Simmer while stirring often until you have a thick sauce. Both versions go well with romano cheese.

Hillbilly Spaghetti Sauce
The first time I made my own recipe for a pasta sauce, it was this. I had 20lbs of tomatoes and needed to preserve them as well as an equal amount of other vegetables.
First fry a good 1/2 lb of minced bacon.
Add in a large onion and 2 large carrots minced. Celery is optional.
Add in 6 lbs of cored and diced tomatoes.
2lbs shredded zucchini
1 lb diced mushrooms
A handfull of chiffonade of basil
Garlic to taste, but a whole head will be good
Salt and pepper and parsley to taste
And lastly a 1/4 cup of bourbon
Simmer on low for 2-4 hours or until all is reduced by half of original volume.

Stroganoff
Cook 2 lbs of ground beef,
add paprika, parsley, black pepper, and salt to taste
Add mushrooms and a pat of butter and cook until mushrooms are done.
Add in cooked fettucini and 2 cups of sour cream stir well and serve hot.

Ravioli Filling
Ricotta cheese and cooked itallian sausage.

Yummmm!!! Thank you for sharing your pasta recipe with us, Ryan!

Dave Burton wrote:Yummmm!!! Thank you for sharing your pasta recipe with us, Ryan!

I'm going to edit in more recipes incl butternut squash sauce, hillbilly spagetti sauce, stroganoff, and the fillings for ravioli.

We also tend to make lots of gravy at once and use leftover gravy on pasta with sausage and bacon.

Great post! I'd like to hear from people who have added powdered greens, which ones you like best and why. I have access to dried nettles, dried buckwheat greens, and other dried greens (some kind of lettuce, and some kind of mustard or Chinese cabbage).

I live in a region where pretty much everyone makes homemade pasta every day for at least one meal, but I don't do it at home, putting my dough efforts into bread and my pasta cravings into commercial dried pasta.

But I do sometimes make lasagna noodles, which are about as easy as using dried lasagna noodles, if dough is something you make easily and casually. It's easier to roll out a sheet of dough to fit the available pan than to either boil commercial lasagna noodles, cool them, and then use them, or as I used to always do, use dry commercial lasagna noodles raw but then have trouble making them fit the available pan. I find whole wheat lasagna comes out fine. My lasagna fillings and sauces are as varied as your pasta sauces above so I won't detail those. Basically I use what I've got and hope it all comes together. I've been thinking it might be nice, less messy when serving, to roll up serving-sized rolls of filling and smothering them in sauce, but I haven't tried it yet.

Rebecca Norman wrote:Great post! I'd like to hear from people who have added powdered greens, which ones you like best and why. I have access to dried nettles, dried buckwheat greens, and other dried greens (some kind of lettuce, and some kind of mustard or Chinese cabbage).

When I make a sweet sauce like squash sauce I put maccha in the noodle dough to balance the dish. Mugwort is also good. You can also use sprouted flours. I find that using up to 1/3 of a non glutenous flour still works. So you can add buckwheat, barley, rice, amaranth, quinoa, etc... as long as it isn't so much that it interferes with the elasaticity of the dough.