Friday Night Pasta Party!

Dora, one of my friends from church choir, made a New Year's Resolution to cook or bake 50 things she's never made until this year. She asked me in early January if I'd be willing to help her with some homemade pasta, since you definitely need more than two hands to work the machine, and I excitedly volunteered! We finally matched up schedules and got together last night for the pasta party.

We decided on two varieties of pasta -- a spinach noodle, and a butternut squash-filled tortellini. What an adventure, especially since neither one of us has really made homemade pasta before!

The sheets of spinach dough got quite long:


Cut noodles, drying a bit and waiting:


Headless Dora, continuing to crank sheets of spinach dough:


Me, working on the dough for the tortellini:


Piles of gorgeous spinach noodles, waiting to be boiled:


Dan thought he was showing up just in time to eat, but really, we needed his help cutting circles for the tortellini:


Me, filling and shaping tortellini:


This was a LOT of work:


Finished spinach noodles, tossed with frozen pesto from Dora's garden:


Finished tortellini, tossed with a butter-shallot-mushroom-parsley sauce:


My plate:


This was a fun and delicious way to hang out on a Friday night! I may have to borrow Dora's pasta machine in the future, and make us a huge batch of tortellini for our freezer. I'm especially curious to try my hand at making whole-wheat pasta!