Elena's parents invited me over to make linguine last night. And I'm not just talking about opening the jar of sauce and throwing some pasta in the water. Al helped me make it from scratch. I actually made it from scratch with my friend Peter awhile back, but I think I needed some more training. Al thought so too and made sure I did all the hard manual labor!

So we started with a bowl, 3 cups of semolina flour, and 6 eggs.

I mixed the eggs and flour, then kneaded it for awhile until it was smooth, adding some wheat flour to dry it out a little. Then Al told me to knead it some more... Once the dough was smooth, we rolled it out in to a long roll about 2 inches in diameter, and chopped that roll in to 4 inch long pieces. We flattened those out and coated them with flour, then ran them through the pasta maker on the largest setting (7), and progressively down to the smallest setting (1). We heavily coated the sheets with flour as we sat them on the counter. They keep absorbing the flour and need more of it to keep from sticking, so we periodically it. We cut the long pasta sheets in half to make them more manageable.

Once all the pasta was all flattened, we set up the cutter to cut it in to linguine width noodles. As the sheets came out of the cutter in the form of noodles, we gently laid them out on the counter, sprinkling them with more flour so they wouldn't stick together.

Next we boiled the cut pasta. Apparently it's done when it floats to the top, but we also tasted it to see how chewy it was which seemed to be a more reliable measure of if it was done or not.

In additional to the pasta, we made a Vodka tomato sauce. Al was a bit sketchy on the details of the recipe, but I did get a little information out of him after a few glasses of wine. Saute some diced onion in olive oil, add a can of crushed tomatoes, a can of diced tomatoes, some black olives, and fresh ground black pepper. Let it simmer for awhile to thicken, then add some heavy cream and vodka before serving it.

Here's the pasta ready to eat. Buon appetito!