Homemade Spinach Linguine

This week I put the MamaMixer pasta rollers to work.  Our Christmas plans are in a semi-fluid state, sort of like a really good molten chocolate cake - but I digress.  So it ends up that we'll have family at our place for Christmas, for which I'm thrilled.  In a moment overtaken by a craving, I've decided to stray from the 'normal' holiday meal of ham or turkey and all the trimmings and go for an Italian feast.

Since the pasta rollers hadn't seen a workout since March and green is a great, festive, Christmas color, I decided to make homemade Spinach Linguine.  I did some google searching to find tips and tricks and below is the recipe and notes I used. We tested some for dinner last night, it's good!

Homemade Whole Wheat- Spinach Linguine

Ingredients:

2 cups Unbleached All Purpose Flour

2 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour (finer than regular whole wheat)

2/3 cups Spinach Puree (as smooth as you can possibly get it)

1/3 cup Water plus 3+Tablespoons for consistency

Directions

1.  Make your spinach puree.  I took 1-10 ounce package of frozen spinach and microwaved it until thawed and semi-cooked.  Then took ran it in the blender, liquid and all, and added more water 1/4 cup at a time, until the puree was the consistency such that it would pour smoothly.  (Freeze the puree you don't use in the pasta and add it to another recipe for extra nutrition.)

2.  Combine flours in a large mixing bowl, or the bowl of your mixer.

3.  Form a well in the center of the flour in the bowl and add spinach puree and 1/3 cup of water.  Blend ingredients with a spoon or fork until crumbly.





4. Add water 1 tablespoon at a time as you (or your mixer) kneads the dough until a stiff dough forms.  If using a MamaMixer once the dough forms a ball and all pulls away from the bowl - you're there.  Knead it for a couple more minutes until smooth.



5. Roll & Cut.  If you have pasta rollers, follow the directions on your rollers to roll and cut the dough.  If working by hand, roll it out as thinly as possible and then slice it up.



6.  Cook or Preserve.  If you're cooking up your pasta right way, place it in a pot of boiling water for 5-8 minutes, drain and enjoy.  If keeping it for a while, allow your noodles to "dry" a bit until they are the consistency of soft fruit leather - usually a couple hours.  Then put in seal-able bag and place in refrigerator or freezer.



A Couple Notes: As I was working with the dough I was really afraid that the texture was going to be off because of the whole-wheat flour.  The dough kind of felt like a fine-grit sand paper and that's not appetizing at all!  I'm happy to say that the whole wheat cooked up beautifully and the texture was soft and fabulous as you would expect a homemade pasta to be.

Also, I was concerned because there seemed to be a lot of fibers from the spinach that I couldn't get out of the puree, these too seemed to disappear in the cooking process.  If you have particularly fibrous puree, you may want to run it through a strainer before putting it in the pasta dough.

Now I have to decide if I want to make an Alfredo Sauce and garnish with roasted red pepper or make a rose sauce.  Decisions decisions!