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When it comes to pasta, for Scott Tacinelli and Angie Rito, the husband-and-wife team behind New York City’s Michelin-starred Italian restaurant Don Angie, nothing beats handmade.
“Making pasta is a very rewarding experience, and it can be very relaxing in a weird way,” says Rito, who co-authored the new cookbook “Italian American” with Tacinelli. In it, the couple explores classic Italian family recipes (expect lots of red sauce), done in their modern American style (lasagna pinwheels, for example).
To make fresh noodles in their own home, the pair have two pasta machines they love for different reasons. The first is a tried-and-true Imperia hand-crank roller ($100, amazon.ca), which is a staple in many Italian kitchens — in fact, theirs once belonged Tacinelli’s grandmother. The chrome-plated steel machine is not only durable, but also beautifully straightforward. “It’s not intimidating; there aren’t all of these bells and whistles,” says Rito. “There’s a roller, a cutter and a crank to make it all go. That’s it.”
The included roller is six inches wide, making it suitable for sheets of noodles, or spaghetti and fettuccine, and there are also two cutters for different widths. Attachments for other noodle shapes are sold separately. It’s easy to clean, too: just wipe it down.
Manoeuvring it does come with a learning curve: feeding your pasta dough through the machine with one hand while cranking with the other can be tricky at first, says Tacinelli. But once you’re comfortable with it, you’ll have more control of your end-product noodles. His only real nitpick? It can be hard to find the right place for the small clamp that’s meant to secure the Imperia to a countertop while in use.
The pair’s second recommendation is more of a splurge: KitchenAid’s three-piece pasta roller set ($230, amazon.ca), designed to attach to the brand’s stand mixers. The set, which includes a stainless-steel roller and two cutters (one for spaghetti and the other for fettuccine), is more user-friendly since the machine does the heavy lifting — or rather, cranking — for you. “You can just focus on guiding the pasta through it,” says Tacinelli. “And you end up with a good amount of pasta.”
If you’re a complete beginner and have room in your budget, Rito recommends going for the KitchenAid attachment, especially if you already have a compatible stand mixer. But to save money and make delicious pasta with no extra mixer needed, Tacinelli says you can’t go wrong with the old-school Imperia, which is what he ultimately prefers.
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