Christmas multi coloured fresh pasta stars

Mr. Schäuble, can you find a cheaper Christmas gift?

ingredients for 12 packets of about 250 g (total cost about 10€)

1kg organic flour from soft wheat
1 kg organic semolina from durum wheat flour
1l water
4 tsp very well ground spices (a mix of cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg, ginger and cloves)
3 of the following:
a) 4 tsp dried wild mushrooms powder
b) 4 tsp carrot powder or 200 gr fresh carrots
c) 4 tsp nettle powder or 200 gr fresh nettles
d) 4 tsp parsley powder or 200 gr fresh parsley
e) 4 tsp spinach powder or 200 gr fresh spinach
f) 4 tsp beetroot powder or 200 gr fresh beetroots
g) 4 tsp pepperoncino powder

I love Christmas. Actually, I love everything about Christmas. The songs and the carols, the lights and the colours, the scents and the aromas, the snow and the cold, the Angels and the Magi, the ……

– You forgot the turkey….

– What? Are you stupid? I don’t like turkey, especially the frozen one, I consider it the worst choice for the Christmas meal. Turkey is tasteless and boring. Try roasting a free range rooster or use pork instead and you ´ll deserve a mush better meal.

– What about panettone?

– Panettone is a mediocre solution for a Christmas meal. Italians have many better Christmas holiday desserts, just try the Neapolitan struffoli or the Sicilian buccellato. By the way, what will you offer to your friends and parents as a Christmas gift?

– I dunno, a Christmas ornament, I suppose.

– Do something special, man. Frozen turkey, confectioned panettone, kitsch ornaments !!!! No, this is not Christmas. Have you read our fresh pasta encyclopaedia?

– No.

– So first of all have a look here and then I show you the way to make original and special Christmas pasta, using organic flours and vegetal colours. And also to save a lot of money. Stop buying and offering common, boring things. Try surprising your friends offering them something that they have never seen, something made by yourself, something that everybody would admire.

You, what would you prefer? One more industrial ornament or some healthy pasta, made by the hands of a friend of yours, especially for the Christmas soup?

– The pasta, it’s clear.

– Let´s start. First of all we must decide which vegetal aromas we will use for our pasta mix and if we use fresh products or powders. In every case you will find the way here. You can raise or lower pasta colour density adding or removing a quantity of powder or fresh vegetables.

My favourite blend is a part of plain pasta, a part of beetroot pasta, a part of spinach pasta and a part of carrot pasta, but you can combine the vegetal aromas you want and prepare your own, personalized blend.

Especially for Christmas, we add some spices in the dough. Follow the above ratios of flours and water and prepare eggless pasta, about 50% hydrated. It is crucial that the spices are ground the very last moment before adding them in the dough in order to keep all their aromatic elements.

So, we knead the flour, the semolina and the spices with the water till the dough comes smooth and elastic. We divide it in four equal parts, we keep one part (about 750 gr) plain and we add the powders or the cooked and melted vegetables to the other dough parts. We knead them again till well incorporated. We let the pasta doughs rest for at least one hour, sealed with cling film.

We remove the doughs from the fridge, we cut them in pieces and we start passing them through the pasta machine. We stop at position 2 or 3. We can also roll them with a rolling pin, if we are experienced, making flat discs or rectangular pieces of dough.