spinach pasta

makes 1 pound; enough to serve 4

Italian wheat flour is graded according to how finely it’s ground; “00” is the finest and used to make fresh pasta. Unbleached, all-purpose flour is a perfectly good substitute. Use mature spinach as “baby” leaves are too watery and tender.

Blanch the spinach in a large pot of salted boiling water for 1 minute. Transfer it with a slotted spoon to a bowl of ice water to cool, then drain it. Squeeze out as much water as possible with your hands. Finely chop the spinach.

Sift the flour into a mound on a smooth surface and make a well in the center. Add the spinach, then the eggs, and 1 generous pinch of salt to the well and beat with a fork until well combined. Continue gently beating the eggs and spinach while gradually stirring in the flour, little by little, from the inside rim of the well. When the dough is too lumpy to work with the fork, use your hands to knead in the remaining flour and form a rough ball.

Clean the work surface and lightly dust it with flour. With clean dry hands, knead the dough, dusting it with flour as you work, until it becomes a smooth supple ball and is no longer tacky. Press your thumb into the center of the dough; if the center feels tacky, knead in a little more flour. Cover the dough with an inverted bowl or wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes and up to several hours.

Cut the dough into eighths and keep them covered. Flatten one piece of dough into a rectangle then feed it through the smooth cylinders of a hand-crank pasta machine set on the widest setting. Do this two or three times. Decrease the setting on the machine by one notch and feed the dough through the cylinders again. Repeat, decreasing the setting by one notch each time. Roll the pasta through all but the last notch. Lay the sheets of pasta out on a lightly floured surface and cover with clean, damp kitchen towels until you are ready to cut it.

[ you can find this recipe in Canal House Cooking Volume N° 7, La Dolce Vita ]