Freshly Made Fettucini with Chicken Marsala

First of all, forgive me for not updating this more frequently…we’ve been sick this past week and have been souping it mostly and when you’re sick, it’s hard to make “real” soup.

Secondly, forgive me for the horrible photos…Since my mac died (2002-2007 R.I.P.) I haven’t been able to upload pictures as much and the photoshop program on the computer I’m using now is very errrr…..”basic.”

Hopefully, I’ll be getting a new mac soon and buying aperture to go with it…so my lovely photos will be back in the near future. For now, you get what ya get!

I woke up on Saturday morning and started watching Kitchen Nightmares re-runs. I loooove Gordon Ramsay and his show. I was watching the BBC version and he was teaching an Italian restaurant how to make fresh pasta…this “inspired” me so I went and bought a pasta maker the same day. I had been in the mood for real pasta lately…I remember eating some freshly made ravioli from a place in the Bronx once a few years ago when I was still living in NYC and the memory of that ravioli has never faded!!!

I also decided to make fresh alfredo sauce and chicken marsala to accompany my fresh fettucini.

Pasta Directions:

To make fresh pasta, you need:

2 cups of flour

3 eggs

Place the flour in a mixing bowl and make a well in the middle of the flour. Add the eggs inside the well and stir the flour into the eggs slowly.

I added a bit of water because my mixture was still too dry.

After you’ve mixed everything together, kneed it into a mound shape and keep it in the mixing bowl covered with a wet cloth for about 10 minutes to let the ingredients blend together.

Chop about 1/4 of the pasta and rest it on a floured surface. Roll it into a long sheet and then place it through the roller section of the machine. The machine comes with a knob that has numbers indicating the thickness of the pasta. I only rolled it out twice, but next time, I think I will roll it out two more times to make it thinner.

Let the flattened pasta rest for 10 minutes so that it can harden before you put it through the cutter.

Finally, cut the pasta into the shape you want. The machine has fettucini or spaghetti.

Another mistake I think I made here, was leaving the pasta in this way (above) on a plate. When making long strands of pasta, you should try to hang it up to let it dry a bit before you boil it. If you leave it in this “clump” it will be very difficult to put in the pot separately. Unfortunately, the directions did not state this…but it’s good to learn on your own.

I then added salt and grapeseed oil (or olive oil) to a pot of water and let it boil. The timing for the pasta depends on the thickness and how much you make so I went blindly into it, testing it every so often.

While I was making the pasta, I also made the alfredo sauce.

Directions for Alfredo Sauce: 

2 cups of heavy whipping cream

2 cloves of mashed garlic

Parmesan Cheese 

Pour the heavy whipping cream and mashed garlic into a pan. Slowly add parmesan cheese while stirring until you get a thicker consistency than water. Personally, I don’t like to make it too thick, but just thick enough to coat the spoon.

The alfredo sauce doesn’t take too long to make, so after I made the sauce, I put it aside and started working on the chicken marsala.

Directions for Chicken Marsala:

Two Chicken Breasts

Flour

Mushrooms

1 Shallot

1 cup of Marsala cooking wine 

I had two chicken breasts which were pounded thin and coated in flour.

Add grapeseed oil (or olive oil) to a sautee pan and cook the chicken breasts for 4 mins. on each side.

Remove the chicken from the pan and put aside.

Sautee mushrooms and 1 chopped shallot until the scallions are translucent.

Add 1 cup of Marinara cooking wine.

Let the mushrooms and shallots simmer for 3 or 4 minutes.

Add 1 tbsp. of flour to thicken the Marsala sauce and stir.

Once the sauce is thickened, add the chicken breasts back into the same pan and coat with the sauce. (This also helps to re-warm the chicken)

Plate the chicken with the fresh fettucini and serve with a nice chopped salad!