At least it tasted good...

In the process of moving my things out of the pantry in the old house, I ran across a spaghetti/noodle/meat grinder attachment for my KitchenAid.  Imagine my surprise!  Somewhere in the back of my mind I had known it was there, but for some reason it just didn't click that I had it.  I've been having the urge to make homemade pasta recently anyway, so I was super excited.  I've made pasta many times before, but I've always used my trusty old Atlas hand crank roller and cutter.  With the KitchenAid attachment, I could make exotic things like spaghetti and macaroni and lasagna... oh my!  With great anticipation and optimism, I assembled my ingredients...



My first mistake was following the recipe on the semolina package instead of the recipe in the KitchenAid manual.  It looks alright to begin with...







So when it's done kneading, I wrap it up and let it rest.  I was being patient.  Really.  I was.  I even went to the grocery store so I wouldn't be tempted to stick the dough in my "new" toy before I should have.

The time has come to feed the dough into the machine.  I put it in, a little at a time, just like the manual said.  Experience with me the joy and excitement of my first spaghetti coming out of the extruder!!



Then it all went horribly wrong (even though it doesn't look that bad in this pic)-



I went to pick the strands up to coat them in flour while I did the rest of the dough, and they all clumped together in one big mass... or mess... whatever you want to call it.  I realized I was using the small spaghetti die (basically angel hair pasta), so I knead the dough back together, switch dies, and start again...

Same thing.  I knead some more flour into the dough and try again.  Fail.  I try the egg noodle die.  Fail.  At this point I know the dough is just too wet and I'm trying to salvage it any way I can.  Once again I knead more flour into the dough, but this is at least the sixth time through the extruder.  The dough is impossibly overworked and it's breaking apart... when it's not clumping together...

At this point I'm just trying to get dinner finished.  I run it through ONE MORE TIME, take whatever comes out, and throw it in the pot of water.



It's not as clumpy as I thought it would be, but because the dough is so overworked, the strands start breaking into little bits.  I get the meat, sauce, etc. ready to go and toss it in, hoping for the best...



This picture does not fully show the extent of carnage that occurred... and believe me, that bottle of wine was empty shortly after this was taken...



In the end, it didn't turn out TOO bad.  It was still mighty tasty... it just didn't look anything like spaghetti carbonara with chicken.



Well, maybe a little like it.

Next time I will be using the recipe from the KitchenAid manual, and I have every faith that my pasta will turn out looking... well... better than this.