On Tuesday Shaz and I attended the second level of the Pasta Making course the Italian Center was putting on. It had been a very long day for me as I had just finished working at our Spring photo shoot and was super pooed, but the idea of making and eating fresh pasta had me very excited.

On the menu for this class was…

Tomato Pasta Dough
Cheese Cappelletti
Mushroom Ravioli
Veal & Spinach Cannelloni
Seafood Messalune
Spinach Gnocchi Nude
Beurre Blanc Sauce

We started off by learning how to make the Tomato Pasta Dough which was very simple. We also learned that you can replace the Tomato Paste (which gives the dough its flavour and colour) with Basil Pesto or other ingredients to change it up.

Next we learned how to make the fillings for all the different types of pasta we were going to make. This was the one thing I was looking forward to the most as I was totally stumped on ideas.

We were then given a demo on how to make Cannelloni (one of my Nonnas specialties).

We were split into groups of three and I gave Shaz the honour of making the dough from scratch since I had already done it quite a few times. I’m glad we were given this opportunity this time as it allowed us to really get a feel for the dough and when the consistency was right. Our dough was too dry and Chef Rebecca showed us how to slowly add more water until everything felt right.

These are Spinach Gnocchi Nude. When Chef asked us if we knew what the Nude part meant we all assumed it meant the Gnocchi were done in a butter sauce. Turns out we were wrong. Nude meant with out potatoes. What!? No potatoes!? How is that even possible!?

Oh, it’s possible! We mixed together all the ingredients (spinach, cheese, egg, flour, nutmeg) and then created the shape using a spoon technique. The shape / technique is called a Quenelle. It took us a while to get the hang of making them as you have to make sure they are very tight and compact. You also have to cook them a little longer than potato gnocchi, but they taste amazing in a butter sauce!

Chef Rebecca also showed us this neat technique of adding herbs to your pasta dough and rolling it out to create patterns. Fancy!

We tried our hands at making the Seafood Mezzelune (half moons) while some of our other classmates made the Mushroom Ravioli and Cheese Cappelletti (little hats).

Nonna Shazzi and I moved on and made some Veal & Spinach Cannelloni with the Tomato Pasta Dough. Talk about flavours!

After we were done making all of the pasta, we sat down for a taste test.

Stuffed pasta is where it’s at! My favorite by far were the Mushroom Ravioli and the Spinach Gnocchi. I am on a huge Mushroom kick right now and the ravioli were melt in your mouth good!

I love making fresh pasta, and while its nice to make linguine and spaghetti, I think using the fresh dough to make stuffed pasta is really the best way of using it. Experimenting with different fillings and pasta shapes, the possibilities are endless.

I also want to experiment more withe flavoured pastas. I tasted a piece of the raw Tomato Pasta Dough and it was quite good. So many options!

I am totally inspired now!

Can’t wait for Pasta Making Level 3!