Tagliatelle
Pasta comes in all shapes and sizes, but one of Italy’s favorites is tagliatelle. The Italian National Registry even preserved the original recipe and created a gold cast replica of the ideal noodle measurements. Not only does tagliatelle provide the ideal base for traditional ragúsauce, it also serves as an interesting footnote to the story of Lucrezia Borgia, the famous illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander.
According to legend, the chef for Lucrezia’s third wedding took inspiration from Lucrezia’s long golden locks and cut pasta into thin golden strips, thus creating the iconic tagliatelle noodle. As they like to say in Italy, “Conti corti e tagliatelle lunghe” or “May you have short bills and long tagliatelle.”
Ingredients
| 2 1/2 cups / 300 grams | Flour |
| 4 | Medium eggs |
| 1 pinch | Salt |
Makes 4 servings.
Steps
On a counter or wooden cutting board, shape the flour into a mound with a large hole in the center, so it is shaped like a volcano. Crack the eggs into the middle. Add the salt and beat the eggs with a fork. Mix the eggs into the flour a little at a time until you have a homogeneous and consistent ball of dough. Work the dough with your hands for
10 to 15 minutes until the mixture is smooth and elastic, adding additional flour if it feels too sticky. Cover the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for about 30 minutes.
Unwrap the dough on a clean chopping board. Now you can either begin running the dough through a pasta maker or rolling it out yourself with a rolling pin.
If you decide to use a rolling pin, continually rotate the dough clockwise to ensure that the pasta is a consistent width. Be sure that the surface and rolling pin are always dusted with flour. If you are using a pasta maker, run the dough through a few times at each setting, gradually working down until the dough is less than 1 millimeter thick. You may need to cut the dough in half at some point if it gets too long to easily work with.
Once you have rolled out the dough into thin pasta sheets, let it rest for about 30 minutes. Roll it loosely over a rolling pin; then lay the pasta flat. With a sharp knife, cut the pasta sheet into 7-millimeter-wide strips. Gently unravel the strips and twirl them into little nests. Finally, dust the nests with flour and place them on a tray to rest, ready to be put into boiling water and cooked.