Les Petits Chefs make pasta from scratch with Emily Richards

We were thrilled to welcome Emily Richards back to the Petits Chefs kitchen lab again this week.  Emily is a Professional Home Economist with over 20 years’ experience working in the food industry. If you were a regular viewer of Canadian Living Cooks on Food Network you might recognise Emily! This week was her TENTH time working with the boys!

It’s always very rewarding when chefs want to come back and work with the Petits Chefs over and over again and Emily is one of those.  She’s taught them how to make gnocchi from scratch,  strawberry and rhubarb pies, sticky date pudding, how to grind meat and make their own sausages, she showed them how to bake hors d’oeuvres for the holidays, they made gnocchi from her latest book, Per la Famiglia, they made ricotta-stuffed pasta shells they’ve learned how to make arancini, and last time she came, Emily showed the boys how to make stuffed jalapeño peppers.

This time, Emily suggested showing the boys how to make pasta from scratch and I couldn’t think of a better activity for the second last day of school (also, a wonderful activity to send the boys on their way into summer – who doesn’t want to learn how to make pasta from scratch – with or without a machine?).

We started out making the dough – it’s so easy with just flour, salt, water, eggs and a splash of oil!

Gradually it started to look like dough…

And we started to knead..

Emily taught the boys how to test the dough to see if it needed more flour…

And they carefully followed her instructions…

Some of us were pretty enthusiastic when it came to kneading the dough…

Then we got to rolling it out. Some of the boys hand rolled – doing a beautiful job…

And others used the pasta machine…

The boys who hand rolled the dough also cut it by hand and did a very professional job…

Pretty perfect, huh? And also, who knew that the secret to cutting pasta was rolling it up like that? Makes total sense but I just never thought of it!

Meanwhile over at the pasta machine…

Both sets of pasta looked pretty professional, if you ask me!

We had a little bit of time at the end so we decided to cook the pasta and make a simple sauce with Parmesan and butter. So simple.. so good…

I have no photos of the finished dish because it was, well, finished before I knew it. Or tucked away in Tupperwares accompanied by whispered promises of seeking takeout cutlery from the dining hall so said pasta could be devoured before any parent laid eyes on it LOL!

I know that *I* learned a lot from Emily this week – I’ve had a few forays into homemade pasta but none of them have been terribly successful but now I feel like I have the skills to go away and experiment – and even feel confident to hand cut my pasta! As I said, I can’t think of a better activity to play with over the long summer break! Thanks, Emily!

Check out what Emily’s up to by visiting her website and follow her on Twitter @ERiscooking or Facebook at Emily Richards Cooks.

Buy Emily’s latest book Per la famiglia on Amazon (this link should bring you to the Amazon store in or closest to your country) or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository.

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Please note: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. This post also contains affiliate links from the Book Depository. This means that if you click over and purchase something, I will receive a very small percentage of the purchase price (at no extra cost to you). Thank you in advance!

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Disclosure: I received a copy of Per la Famiglia for review purposes. I was not asked to write about the book or work with Emily, nor am I being compensated for doing to. All opinions 100% my own and I only recommend products that I really love. FULL disclosure: Emily is my good friend too!