Few home cooks make pasta from scratch because it’s so labor intensive. But those who do take great pleasure in the task. Once you make the dough (which isn’t the hard part) and roll it out, cutting noodles can be done by hand (if you had an Italian nonna to teach you), with a pasta machine, or with new 13-inch long, beechwood rolling pin cutters ($6.95 each) from the Italian company Eppicotispai. The pins cut a sheet of pasta quickly into uniform widths. There’s a pin for spaghetti, and two others for flatter and wider ribbons to create tagliatelle and fettuccine. You need to use a little muscle to cut through the pasta sheet, but time, labor, muscle are all part of the deal. The taste of homemade pasta is worth the effort. Available at Sur La Table locations.
ANN TRIEGER KURLAND
