I'd gone shopping with the girls and saw a manual pasta machine for a mere 20 notes, so bought it for OH who reckons on being a bit of a "foodie". Gave it to him, and he said he was always a bit skeptical about these machines...Ie, is it really worth the hassle when you can buy ready made pasta for pennies, even the fresh stuff's fairly cheap. He agreed to give it a go. He bought a bag of expensive pasta flour and said he'd tackle it on his day off. He had a quick read of the manual and pretty much decided after seeing diagrams of individual threads of pasta hanging on some kind of wooden contraption, that life indeed is too short and "darling, is it too late to get a refund?" Sadly it was, but I donated the machine to the local charity shop.
A few weeks later, I saw that Kenwood do a pasta making attachment for the "Chef" and I've got one. I read the blurb, and wow, this looked really simple. Make the dough in the chef, and simply feed it through the attachment. There was about six different interchangeable outlets for spaghetti, rigatoni, tagliatelle, penne and lasagne cant remember the other. I bought it. OH said "WHY?" It's not going to work, i'm having nothing to do with it, if you want to make pasta then by all means have a go....so I did. The recipe called for plain flour, but I ignored it and made up the mixture using the expensive pasta flour we'd bought. It soon became very evident that it was the wrong consistency and would never pass through the machine. So undettered, I made up another batch using plain flour....I started feeding the mix through the machine, and very slowly it started to come through...I was well excited. However it got blocked up every five seconds as you can only put the minutest amount of mixture into the tube, it went everywhere, the machine seemed to be over heating. I tried using a different head but the results were dreadful coming out cracked and curly. The instructions said it would start to come out curly, but simply reprocess it...I think they'd forgotten that when it comes out...it would be the wrong consistency to put back into the machine. Well I decided to cook up the small amount of pasta that had taken nearly an hour to do, (and had to be used within four hours) very convenient that! It broke up slightly on cooking, tasted nice..but not special enough to make all that hassle worthwhile...Yep hubby...definitely life's too short. Least I haven't left it too late to get my money back this time!
A few weeks later, I saw that Kenwood do a pasta making attachment for the "Chef" and I've got one. I read the blurb, and wow, this looked really simple. Make the dough in the chef, and simply feed it through the attachment. There was about six different interchangeable outlets for spaghetti, rigatoni, tagliatelle, penne and lasagne cant remember the other. I bought it. OH said "WHY?" It's not going to work, i'm having nothing to do with it, if you want to make pasta then by all means have a go....so I did. The recipe called for plain flour, but I ignored it and made up the mixture using the expensive pasta flour we'd bought. It soon became very evident that it was the wrong consistency and would never pass through the machine. So undettered, I made up another batch using plain flour....I started feeding the mix through the machine, and very slowly it started to come through...I was well excited. However it got blocked up every five seconds as you can only put the minutest amount of mixture into the tube, it went everywhere, the machine seemed to be over heating. I tried using a different head but the results were dreadful coming out cracked and curly. The instructions said it would start to come out curly, but simply reprocess it...I think they'd forgotten that when it comes out...it would be the wrong consistency to put back into the machine. Well I decided to cook up the small amount of pasta that had taken nearly an hour to do, (and had to be used within four hours) very convenient that! It broke up slightly on cooking, tasted nice..but not special enough to make all that hassle worthwhile...Yep hubby...definitely life's too short. Least I haven't left it too late to get my money back this time!
