Homemade Spinach Pasta

Here’s our homemade spinach pasta recipe made with semolina and white flour.  The end product is a terrific fresh spinach fettuccine pasta ideally served with good butter and lots of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of semolina flour (we used a very good Pastificio Vicidomini semolina flour from the excellent online shop Olio2go)
• 1 cup of all purpose flour
• 1 cup of cooked and chopped spinach (if you can find fresh then use it, but frozen is fine as well)
• 1 egg (if you like to use more eggs when making pasta then you can use 2 eggs, but omit the spinach water below)
• 1 teaspoon of extra virgin olive oil
• 1 pinch of Kosher salt
• 4 ounces of water (if you’ve saved the water from cooking down the spinach then use it instead of plain water)
• NOTE: if you’re looking to make plain homemade pasta with flour and semolina then simply omit the spinach.

Process:

We showed our readers how to use the “well method” to make standard fresh pasta with white flour and eggs and for our semolina spinach fresh pasta recipe we’re using our trusted Cuisinart food processor.    The first step is to add all of the dry ingredients (viz., semolina, all purpose flour, and salt) to your food processor and pulse a few times.  Next, add all the wet ingredients (viz., spinach, egg, and water) and pulse well and until the dough begins to pull away from the sides of the machine.

Remove the dough from the food processor and move to a clean work surface and work the dough by hand for a few minutes (the dough should not be soft and should have a slightly firm/semi hard consistency; this will yield the best pasta).   Move the dough to the fridge and let sit for a few hours (overnight would be fine as well).  Using your pasta machine roll out large 2-3 feet sheets and allow to dry for 30 minutes (letting the pasta sheets sit will prevent the pasta from sticking when you go to cut it).

Next, use the fettuccine setting on your pasta machine and begin cutting the pasta.   We like to create nests with our cut pasta as opposed to using drying racks, broom handles, etc. (which are all unnecessary).  When creating pasta nests simply use a bit of flour to coat the fettuccine and mound together;  “bouncing the nests” with your hand a few times to ensure there aren’t any strands sticking together.  Our recipes makes about two pounds of pasta.

We like fresh pasta with very basic sauces including butter and grated cheese, pesto, or very good extra virgin olive oil, a pit of chopped parsley, and grated cheese.

We also made plain semolina and white flour fettuccine and here are the photos: