Spaghetti with Meatballs

For a graduation gift, my parents were kind enough to buy me a pasta maker attachment for our kitchen-aid. We were pretty anxious to try it, so on Sunday we finally did, and the noodles turned out to be delicious.

We were a little nervous because our dough was extremely dry and crumbly, but we tried it anyway and after a very slow start we had a steady flow of spaghetti noodles coming out.

Marinara Sauce with Meatballs

1 can tomato sauce

1/2 TBS chopped garlic

1 TBS parsley

1/2 TBS oregano

1/2 TBS basil

1/4 tsp salt

a sprinkle of pepper 

 1/4 cup onion, chopped

12 meatballs (we used frozen meatballs from Costco)

1. Heat meatballs in the microwave on high for 3 minutes.
2. Meanwhile combine sauce and spices in a medium sized pan.
3. Heat to a simmer. Simmer until sauce becomes desired thickness.
4. Cook chopped onion in a small pan over medium heat, until slightly brown and tender.
5. Put cooked onions and meatballs in sauce.
6. Cook for another couple of minutes, to blend the flavors.

 Spaghetti Noodles

4 eggs

3 1/2 cup flour

1 TBS water

1 tsp salt

1. Break eggs into a liquid measuring cup.
2. Eggs should measure to be 7/8 of a cup. If not, add 1 tsp of water at a time until eggs are 7/8 cup. 
3. Sift flour.
4. Put salt and sifted flour into kitchen aid mixing bowl. 
5. Beat with flat hook, on speed 2, as you slowly add the eggs and water.
6. Mix for 30 seconds.
7. Put on dough hook. 
8. Mix on speed 2 for 2 minutes.
9. Dough will be very very very crumbly. (If you are not using the kitchenaid pasta-extruder this might not be the recipe for you. But a good one can be found here)
10. Knead the dough with your hands for about 2 minutes.
11. Separate the dough into small balls (About the size of a walnut).
12. Don't worry about the dough being crumbly and dry, the machine will still send it through.
    It starts out slow, and gets faster as the machine warms up (don't push the dough balls through, the machine will take them at the right pace)
    
13. Put a couple balls in at a time. Add more when the first ones have gone into the twisty tube.
14. Let the noodles sit for about 1 hour (We just stored them in the fridge till we were ready to make dinner)
15. Cook noodles in boiling water, for about 3-5 minutes. (It took 4 minutes for our noodles)
16. Drain water from noodles.
    

 

Top noodles with sauce. And enjoy!

Warning, this sauce only makes enough for 2 (maybe 3), but you'll have way more noodles than that. We dried some of the noodles (and are saving them for later) and we still cooked too much. But if you're making this for more people remember that the fresh noodles will weigh more than dried noodles would (because they aren't DRIED, and have liquid in them still). So try judging more on space that the noodles take to guess how many you should cook. Also, you can always make more sauce by doubling or tripling the recipe depending on how many people.