Jaime!

My friend has one true love. No matter what others there may be in her life, she has always loved, and will love forever, Jamie Oliver, the naked chef. I hadn't paid much attention to him previously (c'mon, if you have to undress to get attention, what does that imply about the quality of your food?), but little did I know. Recently inspired by Hank Shaw to try something new and make my own pasta, I borrowed a pasta maker and consulted her, the undisputed queen of homemade pasta in our food loving circle of friends.

I got several practical tips from her, which have helped me a lot with my first batch of pasta, which I had for lunch today and which is pictured above. Some gems from her, and the above links- use semolina or 00 flour (I used half semolina and half normal baking flour, which is what I had on hand)- knead until your arms fall off- let the dough rest at least 30-60 minutes- work in small batches, so your dough soesn't dry out too much- freezing of fresh pasta works better than drying- get the right consistency (like the inside of a woman's arm, according to Hank) by rolling the dough through the pastamaker on the widest setting and folding after each turn. This also helps to get some nice square pieces of dough (which actually isn't all that important when you're making tagliatelle, anyways).

In the middle of explaining, she pulled out her Jamie Oliver cookbook (Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook) to illustrate a finer point she was making. I started browsing (it's hard to resist the great layout and food photography), and despite my prejudice, I have to admit that I liked it. It has a lot of recipes that, number one, sound very yummy, and, number two, sound like something I realistically could do on a weekday night (ok- I'm not saying every weekday night here). Number two usually determines whether the cookbook will be used by me or not. I have the most gorgeous cookbooks and never use them because the recipes are just too involved for my current level of commitment to cooking. I'd rather just improvise something with under six ingredients. So now I'm debating whether I should buy the Jamie Oliver book or not. Basically, I could just get all the same recipes from his website... but it is a gorgeous book. Here's a recipe for egg pasta similar to the pasta I made above.