Oh, that miracle clove! Not only does garlic taste good, it cures baldness and tennis elbow, too!

'scrolled up' garlic pasta being cut into noodles.


Minikitty (Relish) is such a bad girl! She lives her life for getting into 'bad' places around the house that she's not supposed to be in. Man, I'm telling you, she loves it! So I made her a bed in the kitchen in one of the no-no spots (food related, thus it can go in this blog!!) Isn't she adorable??









On to the food.....


Thank godddd for the pastry scraper, I'm telling ya! The juices from the garlic paste made the dough much more stickier, so with extra flour and some good scrapin', I was able to get the most out of my dough. If you have a pastry scraper, use it!!!!



bacon, beef, tomatoes, shallot, chicken stock (not pictured) accompanied the garlic pasta in a lovely, hearty sauce.


noodles for two!


So the noodles were cooked in a large pot of boiling salted water just until barely al dente (has a bite), about seven minutes (the recipe for homemade pasta I followed directed to boil the pasta for ten minutes). I drained the pasta, and then tossed it in the sauce for a couple minutes until juices were absorbed and the pasta was al dente. When making this, finish the sauce, or at least be in the process of reductiton before the pasta is added to the sauce.

The sauce was as follows: Cook ground beef in a light touch of oil. I was using leftover ground beef, so I only had a quarter pound (small hamburger size)..Increase the amount, or subsitute. I'd say chicken would be great! Remove the beef from the pan once browned and no pink is visible, and add the chopped bacon. Cook it over medium heat until the yummy bacon fat is well distributed in the pan and add the tomatoes (cherry highly recommended). Stir, coating the tomatoes in the juices and add the coarsely chopped shallots. Stir for about a minute, softening the shallots slightly, then return the beef to the pan and add about half a cup of chicken stock (I made my own, but low sodium chicken broth can be bought at most any stores). Let it come to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer until reduced to 1/4 cups.

Add the drained garlic pasta to the pan and cook for a couple minutes until juices are absorbed. My dumb self didn't get fresh herbs when I went to the co-op earlier, and I didn't feel like using dried. So go buy some fresh basil or something! Tear the basil into ribbons and stir into the garlic pasta just before removing the pan from the heat to serve. Spoon the pasta onto plates. With a hand-held grater, grate Parmigiano Regiano over the pasta and serve with a small sprig of basil in the center ;) I served fresh baguettes with the pasta.


Yumm-o!