Easy Homemade Pasta recipe & Using an Italian Chitarra

This is a recipe for a quick and easy week night pasta dough. It does not need a lot of kneading or resting and cooks in just a few minutes.  If you want to speed things up even more, take a look at the Italian Chitarra (pronounced: key-tahr-rah). Although it looks a little bit like a double sided harp, it is indeed for making pasta. It was created in Italy sometime in the 1800’s. The Chitarra has 30 strings (thicker pasta) on one side and 50 on the other (finer pasta). In the center of the device has a slanted board to allow the cut pasta to slide off easily once it’s been cut by the strings. To use, you simply use a rolling pin, flattening and pressing the dough through the wires. It’s a really affordable way to quickly cut pasta.

The essentials to making this pasta are:

  • Roll it out evenly, get it nice and thin. Always keep in mind that the dough will expand when you cook it.
  • Once you cut your pasta toss it in some flour to prevent it from clumping together or use a coat hanger or wooden dowel to hang it.

Easy Pasta Dough Recipe:

6 eggs
2 cups organic unbleached all purpose flour
1 tbsp olive oil
extra flour for rolling/kneading

crack the eggs in a bowl, add the oil, sift in the flour and gently fold in until mixed. Turn out onto floured counter and knead until smooth and no longer sticky (about five minutes). Roll out the dough using plenty of flour. cut into desired shapes, put into gently boiling (salted) water for two minutes. Remove from pot with tongues. Toss cooked pasta in sauce or olive oil and serve.

Easy Pasta Dough Recipe
knead for about five minutes

 

Easy Pasta Dough Recipe
this is partially rolled out. Make sure you have a big counter or table! Two cups of flour and six eggs makes a lot of pasta!

 

Easy Pasta Dough Recipe
Lay your dough out (should not hang over the wooden frame – no biggie but worked better when it was not hanging over like this)

 

Easy Pasta Dough Recipe
After rolling with the pin I tapped it down into the tray.

 

Easy Pasta Dough Recipe
It worked! Took about six minutes to finish the rest of the pasta and two minutes to cook it.

 

Easy Pasta Dough Recipe
Simple dinner, Spaghetti tossed with artichokes, Pesto and fresh olives.

 

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3 thoughts on “Easy Homemade Pasta recipe & Using an Italian Chitarra

    • Charlotte Walker says:

      Hmmm. This has me stumped. I can see them from multiple computers in the house. I don’t know why this would be! 🙁

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