A New Toy!

The the spring of 1986 brought with it a nice income tax return in my hot little hands and I knew exactly where I was going to spend it!

Back in the day, Kitchen Aid stand mixers were not as easily found as they are now and once I did a bit of leg-work, I found a place that sold them.  They weren’t cheap, let me tell you!

I have always loved the design of the stand mixer, sort of ‘40’s or ‘50’s, although they changed up the sizes of the bowls, meaning that the newish paddle/batter scraper attachment does not work with the bowls of my “Professional” model purchased in around 1990.  Why did they do that anyway?? My bowls are in perfect condition so why would I want to get new ones?

Fast forward to a couple of months ago, when my sister decided it was time to retire her huge Bosch machine that pretty much did it all but was just too big and no longer did suited their need.  After doing her due diligence, she bought the “Artisan” model Kitchen Aid stand mixer which is pretty much the same as my first one. The only reason I upgraded to the “Professional” was because I got a hot deal and I needed to knead 4 loaves of bread dough at a time and was making over 100 pounds of fruitcake for the Christmas cake clients I had every year. My original baby is still going strong.  First it became a welcome addition to the kitchen at the executive dining room where I worked and now it just keeps on giving in the kitchen in my former assistant’s kitchen. Pretty good recommendation I would say!

If the time comes that I need to replace my “Professional” model…I might just trade her in for the “Artisan.” After spending time with my sister’s machine the other night, I found myself really liking it all over again!

And now it’s time for a pasta lesson: along with her stand mixer, my sister also purchased a few attachments, one being the pasta rolling kit. I have one and my husband couldn’t live without it because until a few years ago he was the guy who did the hand cranking on the little Atlas machine we had and now I do it all by myself! Yeah! She and I planned an afternoon where I would show her how to make her very first homemade pasta and that is what we did! To begin, she made a 4 egg dough using my recipe for Food Processor Stand Mixer Pasta Dough. Once the dough was rolled out and ready for cutting, using the tagliatelle/fettuccine head, she ran it through the cutter. I think she liked the results and next time when she gets her mojo happening, will really get into the Zen of Pasta Making!

We had decided that I would make the sauce for the tagliatelle ahead of time so we didn’t have to worry about that bit. And I had wanted to “try out” Marcella Hazan’s recipe for Bolognese sauce, from her Essentials cookbook, so now seemed the right time! I must say the sauce was very, very good and so far, the front runner of all the Bolognese sauces I have made to date!  I followed her advice and used 2 parts beef and 1 part pork and doubled the recipe!

Once the sauce was heated up, we cooked the tagliatelle for a couple of minutes, reserved some of the pasta cooking water, drained the pasta and tossed it with the sauce, added some pasta cooking water to loosen the sauce, a tablespoon or so of butter and voila.  The tagliatelle were delicate and silky…perfect!

Buon Gusto!!