Homemade Pasta

My mom came to visit me this weekend and Saturday we spent a pleasant afternoon cooking and baking. We decided to make homemade shrimp alfredo pasta for supper, a dish my daughter affectionately calls "greasy noodles." It is her favorite meal in the whole world.

A little road trip was in order so we stopped at the grocery store and at Moreys for some seafood. If you have never been to Moreys in Brainerd, you need to drop what you are doing right this minute and take a little drive over there. They used to have a restaurant and a retail section but they have since moved over to the little strip mall by Famous Dave's and now they only do retail. They don't just sell seafood, there is something in there for everyone from fabulous dips to some of the harder things to find in this area, such as panko. (Japanese bread crumbs) If you are planning to buy some shrimp, go to Moreys and get a pound of the EZ peel shrimp. You will have to cook and peel them but as they are currently at $7.99 a pound, it is cheaper than the grocery stores and tastes better, too! In our little Saturday trip we bought a loaf of French bread, a pound of scallops, a pound and a half of shrimp, a pound of their "Ole" crab dip. All of it was absolutely wonderful. We got back home and started the pasta out with about a pound of flour on the counter. We made a well in the flour and broke three eggs into it. I added a drizzle of olive oil, fresh thyme and basil and started kneading it until it formed a ball. I had to add a little water during the process. We rolled the dough out and used a wooden spatula to cut it into strips. But the question was what do we to hang it on to let it dry? I found a sweater rack in my closet. I washed it off and put it between two chairs. It worked perfect.

I don't have pictures of the alfredo sauce but we created that by starting some chardonnay boiling in a saucepan and then adding garlic, chives, chicken broth, cream and cornstarch. Time to cook up the scallops and shrimp! I have found that if I start a pan out with garlic and olive oil, let it cook awhile, then add scallops, the scallops develop this delicious, garlicky glaze. After that, we added the shrimp. We let the pasta dry for about an hour, then I started a boiling pot of water for it and dropped the noodles in.
Once the pasta was cooked (about 5 minutes) we added it to the seafood and mixed it with mozerella cheese and sea salt. Each plate got a healthy splash of the alfredo sauce. We served it with a bottle of 2005 Piesporter Michelsberg Riesling Auslese (my mom recommended it and it is a great, fruity, zesty wine) and was it ever good! Kevin commented that it reminded him of the dumplings in chicken and dumpling soup only better and that this dish can't be extremely healthy!