Eat Your Greens Pasta

Here’s something about me you might not guess from all the baked goods I make: I like to eat healthy.  I exercise a ton, take omega-3 supplements, am always trying to eat enough greens (thus my daily kale smoothies); you get the picture.  I also like things to taste GOOD. I mean it – I LOVE food. I love eating.  I also love eating out, which often presents a decision crisis for me: do I eat healthy or delicious or sacrifice a bit of both.  There are the occasional restaurants where this conundrum doesn’t present itself, but the easiest place to eat is my own kitchen.

This homemade pasta fits the bill – it’s packed with greens (basically as much as I could fit in without the pasta falling apart) and tastes amazing.  Like homemade pasta should.

I cooked it up with more veggies (surprise!) and made an awesome pasta primavera.  Just some green onions and an assortment of yummy veggies sauteed together, topped off with white wine, lemon zest, parmesan, and a little pasta water (not to mention the ubiquitous S&P). Oh yum.

You will need a stand mixer for this and either a pasta attachment or a hand-crank pasta maker. Alternatively, you can do this without a mixer, but I read somewhere that you have to knead so hard/long that your butt will sweat.  I recently experienced this making a batch of bagels without a mixer and it wasn’t pretty.  My arms were sore for days (we won’t even discuss the state of my clothing).

Makes approximately 1.5 lbs of pasta

Ingredients:
8 oz fresh spinach
6 oz fresh kale
1 Tbsp water
4 large eggs (7/8 cup)
4 cups sifted APF, plus more as needed

Directions:

Finely chop spinach and kale using food processor or blender.  It should be a puree (chunks will tear the pasta.

Put spinach, water, eggs, and flour in a mixer bowl and beat with paddle for 30 seconds.  Exchange for the dough hook and knead for two minutes.  Remove dough from the bowl and hand knead for another one to two minutes, adding flour as necessary.  Dough should be elastic and smooth.

Divide dough into 8 pieces.  Run a piece of dough through with the roller set at 1.  (If using the pasta attachment, turn the mixer to speed 2 or 4). Your dough may tear some at this point – just dust with flour, fold, and run through again. You are now kneading the dough with the machine. Continue to do this until you get a smooth rectangle that is pliable and covers the width of the roller.

Now it’s time to thin it. Continue dusting the dough with flour and feeding the dough through, changing the setting each time until you reach the desired thickness.  I went to 5, which is perfect for fettuccine.  Change roller for a pasta cutter and run through.  Hang pasta to dry over a pasta rack, chair top or twist into nests to dry for up to an hour.

Repeat this whole process with each ball of dough.  (I never claimed this was easy! The end product is good enough to justify it though; I promise.)

Enjoy your pasta boiled in salted water for 2-3 minutes (until al dente). It will store in a covered container in the fridge for 3 days or you can dust with flour and freeze – this is where the nests come in handy.

 

Recipe adapted from the KitchenAid Pasta Attachment book.