The not-so-quick-quick-pasta :BB🐝

Hello everyone in foodies Bee Hive community
I'm writing from a busy kitchen in Cape Town, South Africa.

This is my not-so-Quick-Quick-pasta

I made the tagliatelle fresh by combining 375g of plain flour, half a tablespoon of salt and 4 eggs (I find room temperature eggs work the best). I like to sieve the flour and salt on to a flat surface, making a well in centre of flour, and adding the eggs, kneading the sticky dough until it's a smooth dough. Having extra flour for dusting the dough really helps to make it less sticky.

I usually divide the pasta dough in to four balls and let it rest for a little bit. It's best to wrap the dough balls in cling film while the pasta is resting so the dough doesn't dry out.

Next step is flattening the pasta balls out before rolling the dough through the pasta machine and slicing it in to noodles.
I like the thickness of the noodles to be about 6mm thick and 7mm wide. I allow the noodles to dry out slightly before cooking them.

Now for the meat balls: I blended pork and beef mince, a cup of white bread crumbs ,1 egg yolk, seasoned the mixture with salt and pepper -about half a teaspoon of each and sprinkle of garlic powder. Divide the mixture into 10 meat balls and allow to rest in the fridge.

While the meatballs were resting, I diced up half an onion and heated up about a tablespoon of oil in a pan.

Next I browned the meat balls on each side and added the diced onion, I cooked the onion and meatballs together until the onion was browned. I lowered the heat and added in my premade pasta sauce.

I allowed the sauce and meatballs to cook together for about twenty minutes before boiling the water for the pasta.

Once the pot of water for the pasta was boiling, I added the fresh pasta and cooked for around 3 minutes.

I scooped the pasta from water and placed in the same pan as the meat balls and pasta sauce and I allowed it cook for another two minutes.

I served the pasta and meatballs with shaved parmesan cheese and a quick grind of black pepper.

Recipes
Meat ball ingredients (makes about 12 meatballs)

250g pork mince
250g beef mince
250g white bread crumbs
1 egg yolk
O.5g salt
0.5g pepper
A pinch of garlic powder

Oil for frying
1/2 onion diced
Sliced Parmesan cheese
Fresh basil would be a great touch

Pasta ingredients

375g plain flour
7.5g Half a tablespoon of salt
4 eggs, at room temperature
Plain flour, extra, to dust

Until next time, happy cooking
Julia BB🐝