Jack Lemmon

Welcome you to our series about Pasta! You are handling the book “Lasagna 365 Volume 1”.

CREATING A HANDMADE PASTA on your own is a gratifying way to use your hands to make something

wonderful from your choice of ingredients. Handmade pasta, particularly dough stretched with hands, is

teeming with character—from its pure, vibrant color and smooth, chewy texture to its full, fresh flavor. Roll

the dough to your desired thickness, and slice it in any possible shape. To make stuffed pasta, you can

prepare your customized fillings from premium-quality, preservative-free ingredients (can be local and

seasonal if you like), then season it to suit your taste.

All you need are some practical cooking skills, a few high-quality kitchen tools, and of course, strong upper

body. Here, I share useful advice from many years of failing in the kitchen, as well as teach you how to

correct your own mistakes. As they say, failure is the greatest teacher.

Making pasta is a fun activity for people of all ages, too. Kids find joy in cranking out sheets of dough and

filling their ravioli with a ravioli plaque. Adults, on the other hand, enjoy trying out different flavors, sauces,

shapes, and fillings. Anyone likes the pasta’s variety of shapes, textures, and flavors. Similar to simple foods

like ice cream and bread, four things about ingredients are crucial in pasta-making: their quality, technique,

proportion, and combination.

CUTTING TIME WITHOUT LOSING QUALITY

Several products that help us save time in the kitchen are now available. Nowadays, extracting fresh squid

ink from the small, silvery-skinned sacs isn’t a tedious task for me anymore. Rather, I purchase squid ink

imported from Spain, then add color and flavor to my pasta dough using only one or two teaspoons of the

ink. While there are powdered beets and spinach for adding color to pasta, I’d rather cook and purée my

own veggies (except that I use prepared peppers frequently). What makes a pasta really unique is the

combination of extra bright color, texture, and flavor of puréed vegetables.

Creating Pasta is all about enjoying the process while you work with your hands, making conventional and

new shapes and flavors of fresh artisan pasta (for sharing with your loved ones) through the use of a

wooden table and simple kitchen tools. Majority of the pasta-making techniques in this book are from Italy,

but it also features those from China (pot stickers), Eastern Europe (matzo balls), France (nouilles), Greece

(trahana), Japan (udon noodles), Poland (pierogi), and Turkey. These are creative and flavorful varieties on

dough handmade from liquid and flour.

I hope you’d have a great time learning these pasta techniques and sustain your pleasure and enjoyment of

making artisan pasta. I welcome comments from my readers. Please hit me a message, and I'll definitely

respond.

You also see more different types of pasta recipes such as:

* Mac + Cheese

* Pasta by Shape

* Pasta Sauce

* Vegetarian Pasta

* Baked Pasta

* ...

Thank you for choosing “Lasagna 365 Volume 1”. I really hope that each book in the series will be always

your best friend in your little kitchen.

Let’s live happily and eat lasagna every day!

Enjoy the book,