Fresh pasta with tomato and mozzarella

If you are using dried pasta, please start with putting a pan filled with water on the stove. Since dried pasta needs to cook longer, it needs to start boiling earlier. Once the water is boiling you can already add the pasta, because the rest of the recipe is not really taking long.

I always start with the pasta, since this has to rest in the fridge for about 10 minutes. Normally I take 100 grams of pasta dough and 1 egg for 2 people. For mixing the dough I always use my food processor; it used to belong to my parents and is like 15 years old but I wouldn’t want to miss it! I just put the dough, the egg(s) and a bit of salt in the processor and let it run. In the meantime I boil some water for the tomatoes, make a small cross in the upper skin of the tomatoes and put them in a bowl. Poor the cooking water over it.

Back to the dough; after a short while you’ll see the dough gets attached to each other and you can create a nice and bit sticky ball from it, just knead it a bit more with your hands and put it in a small bowl, cover it with some kitchen wipes and put it in the fridge.

In the meantime you’ll see that the skin of the tomatoes is coming loose. Drain down the water and just rinse the tomatoes with some really cold water. Peel of the skin, take out the pulp and cut the tomatoes in small blocks.

Put a pan filled with enough water (like 2/3rds) on the stove to cook your pasta. Take a serving bowl and add a decent amount of olive oil in it, together with some lemon juice (I always add the juice of half a lemon, but I’m a huge lemon-fan so maybe less is better), please note that you also need to add some lemon skin later so don’t throw away the rest of the lemon. Put the tomato blocks in the bowl and stir so that all the tomatoes have a nice shine from the oil. Chop the onion in very small pieces and add it to the tomatoes. Cut the mozzarella in small blocks as well (this way they will melt a bit when you add the hot pasta). Add some salt (not too much), pepper, chopped lemon skin and frittered basil into the bowl. Stir everything.

Put some flour on your countertop. Roll out the pasta (use a clean area in your kitchen where you have enough space). Once your pasta is thin enough, run it into sheets through the standard setting of the pasta machine. I always do this like 3 times before getting it into the shape I want it. For this dish I always make tagliatelle, so once it’s thin enough, I’ll take it through the tagliatelle setting. Now you put it on a rack to dry and repeat this for all other dough sheets as well.

Once the water is boiling add a decent amount of salt (like really a lot!) and some olive oil to the water. After that, add your pasta. The pasta only needs to boil for about 4 minutes. After about 3 minutes, add two spoons of the water from the pasta to your tomato mix and stir it a bit. Drain the pasta and add it to the tomato mix. Stir everything so that the pasta is well mixed through the tomatoes.

That’s it; you are ready for my favorite pasta dish. Enjoy!