Fire up your oven, and let's get cooking.

[upbeat music] Support for Amy LaBelle's Cooking With Kids is provided by AutoFair, Cook Little Rosenblatt & Manson, DF Richard Energy, Granite State Development Corporation, New England Dairy, Northeast Delta Dental, Stonyfield Organic, Unitil, Enterprise Bank, White Mountains Community College, Monadnock Food Co-Op, Macaroni Kid Seed Co., and viewers like you.

Thank you.

Hi, there.

I'm Amy LaBelle, and I'm a winemaker, but I love to cook, and I especially love to cook in my kitchen with my two boys.

We have today with us Jackson and Lucas Arbaleta, and these are my boys.

And we just love to spend time in the kitchen together.

And we're so glad to have you join us today to learn how to make some really delicious basic pasta dough.

I want you to learn this because it's simple, simple ingredients that you probably already have in your kitchen, and it's pennies to make this recipe.

And it's so super delicious, you're not even going to believe it, and you're not even going to ever want to eat pasta out of a box again, although you will, because you're going to have to do that sometimes.

But when you have time to make this recipe, boy, I think it's really worth the effort, right?

Right.

One of the best days of our lives, ever, was when Jackson and I first learned how to make pasta dough together.

And we made linguine that day, we made ravioli.

Once you learn how to make this dough, you can make it into any shape you want.

So then you have all the control in the kitchen, and you get to make just exactly what you want, and you can put whatever sauce on it that you want.

You can use butter, you can use marinara, you can use cheese sauce or Alfredo sauce or no sauce at all, if you like them plain.

Whatever works for you.

That's one of the beautiful things about learning how to cook in your own kitchen.

Then you get to make it your way, and you don't have to eat it however somebody wants to serve it to you.

So, kiddos, grab your stuff.

You have the recipe online, I hope you're going to make this along with us today.

It's not hard at all, and you really won't believe how easy it is, right guys?

Yeah.

Not too hard at all to make ravioli or any kind of fresh pasta at home.

All right, so first we need to make a volcano.

This is the fun part.

And you get to use your hands when you make ravioli, which is even better.

So take your flour.

We've already measured out our ingredients.

We have everything in its place, ready to go.

That way I know I don't miss an ingredient, and I don't forget to put something in.

It's all right here.

And as long as all my bowls get empty, I know I'm in good shape.

So I want to pour this out on the counter, but not all of it.

I want to hold back just a little bit so that I can add it back in if I need it.

Because you never know with flour.

Depending on the weather or the day or the humidity, you sometimes need a little more, you sometimes need a little less.

So it's best to start with a little bit and add more as you go if you need it, right?

Lucas, you already have two hands dirty.

What I was going to say is it's good to have one hand clean, if you can, when you're cooking.

But if you can't, you can't, and it's kind of fun to dive right in.

So do it as you like.

So let's pour this in a pile.

We'll make a mountain.

And save back like a little bit of dough in your bowl.

Uh-oh.

It's OK, you still have plenty.

And maybe I'll put this over here, so I can make sure you can all see what I'm doing.

So we want to scoot this together with your hands and make a volcano.

Meaning, you want to dig what's called a well in the middle of it.

Now this is how they've made pasta for a million years in Italy.

This is a very traditional, the old grandma's in Italy still make pasta this way.

And we're making this well so it will contain our eggs and our liquid ingredients, and then we'll mix them all together, OK?

All right, how are we going, good?

Pretty good.

Now, your well might break, and that's OK. Is this big enough?

It's still going to come together, and it's still going to work out.

Is this big enough?

Yeah.

Maybe it needs to be a little bigger.

Make it big enough to hold your eggs.

We have a lot of eggs here.

This is two whole eggs and two egg yolks, already-- I already opened them and got them ready for us, so we could be efficient.

All right, you ready?

Yeah.

So what you want to do is pour about half of that egg mixture in and see how your well's holding up.

And then you'll want to sprinkle a little bit of your salt from the recipe into the middle of that well.

[laughter] That's OK.

This is the fun part, right?

You get nice and dirty and you scoot it right back in there, and it's OK. Start mixing that up with your hands now.

And like I said, if you can keep one hand dry, at least, then that's a good thing.

But if not, that's OK, too.

So you start mixing it all together.

Here, you need a little more space?

Uh-oh.

So it's good if you can mix in the middle and kind of slowly incorporate the flour from the edges.

See how I'm going here?

It's all right if you didn't.

But you can dig right back into the middle and make yourself a new well.

See?

You two-- Yes.

You can just scoot it all back in the middle.

All right, now I'm going to add a little more of my egg mixture and mix that in.

Eggs are kind of weird, they stick together, kind of goopy, but they taste good.

All right, we're mixing that all together.

I forgot to keep on hand clean again.

That's all right.

That's all right.

Now you want to take the oil that you've measured out for your recipe and pour that in the middle of your well, too, and start incorporating that.

That's just a little bit of our winemaker's kitchen olive oil.

There's a family in Italy that's made olive oil for centuries, and we get our olive oil from them, and it's so delicious.

See this?

Now look what I'm starting to have here.

A nice, little sticky dough in the middle.

I'm pulling in my flour little by little.

How are you doing?

Are all your eggs in now?

No.

You need to put one egg in.

Boop.

All right, here, I'll do it for you.

Make a well in the middle, so he has a place to live.

There you go.

All right.

Fantastic.

Oh.

It's coming out.

It's OK. That's all right.

You can scoot him right in with your hand.

So you incorporate all this liquid, and then we're going to make a ball of dough.

So the goal here is to end up with a ball of dough that you can roll out into a thin sheet, and then we'll decide what we want to make.

How's your dough coming along?

Pretty good.

So it should be like, wet?

It should be-- It should be just a ball?

That's a good question.

We want to make a nice dough that holds together.

So that needs a little bit of working.

You want to start to knead that a little bit, like this, and incorporating in all that flour.

So this takes a few minutes.

It's a good workout for your arms.

You can do this in a machine, if you want to.

You could do it in a Cuisinart.

But that's kind of cheating.

This is more fun, and you get to get messy and feel.

I like to really get to know my ingredients.

I like to feel them and see how they're behaving, because then I know next time, as I gain experience with this recipe, once you make this several times over and over, you gain experience.

And then you can decide if next time, you wish it was a little bit wetter or a little bit drier.

That's what cooking experience will do for you.

Now you see my dough is starting to come together.

It's kind of a rough, craggy ball.

It's not too great looking yet, but it will be.

Every time I try to push this together it comes on my hands.

Oh, yeah.

That's a disaster.

So let's put some flour on your hands, and you can rub your hands together and try to get some of that off, OK?

So go just like you're washing your hands.

You're good.

Yep, exactly.

That's going to come right off.

Oh, yeah.

It does come off.

Yep.

Just like you're washing your hands, which you're definitely going to have to do.

And let me see if I can help get this pulled together for you.

You have plenty of flour here, for sure.

Oh, and you-- maybe we need to add your oil, I think.

Oh, I didn't add any.

Yep, that's OK. You can come in with that any time.

There.

How's your dough coming along there?

Pretty good.

It's a little dry, or are you feeling good?

It's a little dry.

You can scoot this extra flour into the side.

You can use this bench scraper.

These are handy little tools.

This is a bench scraper, and it can move flour or dough, clean up your counters.

Your mom's will really appreciate that, your caregivers.

That looks good.

All right.

It's a little dry.

It's a little dry.

I'll get some water for you.

Here you go.

Use this bench scraper in the meanwhile, and maybe you'll scrape up the space to work in that's cleaner.

OK, good.

So what Lucas is saying is that his dough is a little dry, and I agree.

See, it still feels like flour, it doesn't feel soft like dough.

So I'm going to add a little bit of water to that for him.

Luckily, I have a kind of clean hand to do that.

I'm going to get that right out of my pot filler here.

That's a handy little tool.

It helps me fill pots right on my stove.

Here you go, I'm going to pour a little bit of water.

You can pour that water right over your dough, and just continue to work it.

And work that water right into the dough.

And if you've made it too wet, that's OK, too, because you can just add back in some flour.

That's the beauty of this recipe, it's really not hard at all, and you can adjust it as you go.

All right, how are you doing?

You need water or flour?

Oh, you're good.

Good job.

All right, so now, good job cleaning up your area.

We're going to put a little flour underneath.

Now at this point when you're starting to knead your dough to make it smooth, it is nice to have a little bit of fresh flour on your board or on your counter, whatever you're using.

You can do this on top of a wooden cutting board or something like that as well.

But if you put some flour down, it'll help to keep your dough from sticking as you're working through it.

So, see how this is a good work out?

Yeah.

Your arms getting tired?

Nah.

All right, good.

How about you?

Looking pretty good.

Yeah?

Starting to feel like dough.

Let me see.

Starting to feel like dough?

Good.

So where we want to get to-- Oh, this is coming along.

See, it's getting softened.

And we want to get to a point where when you put your finger-- when you poke it a little bit, it springs back a bit.

So I think we're really close on this dough.

And we're lucky because we made some a little earlier today.

So I will be grabbing that from the fridge in just a few minutes.

So what you want to do with this dough, because you've got a flour-based dough here, you're going to need to develop the glutens in the dough.

And it's best if you can let this dough rests for about 30 minutes to develop the gluten and to get softened up.

So I like to kind of get my dough to about this place.

See?

It's not smooth, it's not shiny, it's not soft yet, but it will be after it rests a little bit, and then I can work it, just knead it just a little bit more.

So at this point, I like to put it into a disk shape and I wrap it in Saran wrap or plastic wrap.

And then I put it in the fridge and let it rest for 30 minutes.

And I did that earlier, so I'm going to grab those while you guys continue to knead your doughs away.

And I will give you a new dough to work with that has already rested.

OK. And while I get that dough, you should clean up your board.

Yes.

Wait, where should I put this dough?

You can put it with mine over here, and we'll use that later.

We will make that into a disk, just with your hands.

A rough disk, I'll pile that up on mine, and we'll deal with that later, OK?

You can go like this, get all that dough off your hands.

Try not to get all over your floor.

Perfect.

That looks good.

These doughs look good.

Believe it or not, they will make delicious pasta.

All right, I'm going to get that out of the fridge.

And let's see how these look after they've been resting.

The dough smells good.

It does smell good, I agree.

All right, here we go.

Here's one for you.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

One for you.

Uh-oh, you didn't clean up yet.

Well, I did, but then I tried to scoop it all off.

Then you cleaned your hands.

You're good.

That'll go into the dough.

All right, nice job.

Here you go.

Oh, and before you put this dough down on the counter, let's sprinkle some fresh flour on the counter and spread that out with your hands.

Good job.

So that it doesn't stick to the counter.

And we'll have to put a little flour on our rolling pins, as well, because that'll keep the dough from sticking to our rolling pins so here you go, boop, yours.

All right.

I need a little more flour.

OK, here we go.

Now we're going to grab our rolling pin.

We should flour our rolling pin.

So let's grab a little bit of flour from your extra and roll it, just rub it down the sides of your rolling pin, and then maybe a little bit more over the top of your dough, OK.

There's flour everywhere, but it's going to be well worth it.

And look at, we've not been working that long, and we already almost have a full dinner ready to go, which I think is better than-- better than fast food takeout, right?

Well, maybe you don't think that.

Maybe.

Maybe.

So now if we start to roll this out, look what we have now.

I have a soft, smooth, beautiful dough.

That's going to make a beautiful roll down.

We're making raviolis right now, but I want to show you some other things that you can do with this dough.

This is plain pasta dough.

So you can make any shape you want.

You can do this with a pasta machine if you have a pasta machine at home, but you don't need one.

And that's why I really like to make pasta, because it's kind of easy and you don't have to make it perfect, and you don't need any special equipment.

This is a very budget-friendly food to make with your family at home.

So we're trying to roll it out and get to kind of a long rectangle.

I want this to get a little bit longer, all right?

We'll make a little more room.

All right.

Let's see.

How thick should it be?

Well, that's a really good question.

These-- I think for ravioli, if that's what you're making, you want to make this thinner than you think.

Like when this cooks, it's going to puff up just a tiny bit, and if the dough is too thick, your raviolis are going to taste really, like, dense.

So I think the thinner, the better on this.

So I'm going to roll it out a little bit more.

And you know, as this dough is warming up, it's going to get easier and easier to roll, because cold doughs are kind of hard to work with.

But look at that, it's warming right up and we're getting to make it nice and thin.

So you just keep working on it.

You have to have a little bit of patience.

But this process really doesn't take too long, except for that 30 minutes in the middle, which, frankly, is a great time.

When you put your dough in the fridge to rest, that's a really good time for you to then make some marinara sauce or whatever sauce you're going to put on top of your ravioli to impress your family.

I think if you're big enough, mature enough to do this on your own, you could really surprise your family with a fresh ravioli dinner.

I think that sounds good for me.

Does that look pretty good to you?

You gonna make raviolis for me?

Sure.

Promise?

Maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe for Valentine's Day, or something fun, a special holiday.

All right, so let me show you-- uh-oh.

Whoops.

All right, let me show you, I want to show you in the camera, how thin this dough is.

Look, it kind of looks like fabric, almost.

It's almost see-through, right?

It's kind of luxurious to hold.

Isn't that nice?

Feels nice.

Yeah.

I think you could make yours a little bit thinner.

How about you?

It's pretty thick, I need to make it thinner.

Yep, keep going.

Use your big muscles.

And don't be afraid to push right down on it, it's all right.

There you go.

And this dough is going to stretch.

Look, it's got some stretch to it.

That's the glutens in the flour.

Every time I roll it, it goes away.

Yeah, you have a lot of flour on your counter.

Yep.

It's really slippery.

There you go.

Try that.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

All right.

So I'm going to demonstrate how we're going to fill them.

And you guys keep rolling yours, all right?

A little bit thinner.

And I'm going to demonstrate how we're going to fill these.

So because we're making ravioli we have to make a top and a bottom, right?

So I'm going to-- this is-- let me show you this.

This is a beautiful ricotta cheese filling.

The recipe for this is also on the website.

This is a lemon peel and ricotta, and it's just gorgeous and yummy.

And if you want to, if you like spinach or arugula, you can put some greens in here, too, some spinach would be lovely.

But you don't have to fill with ricotta.

I love to fill my raviolis with cheese, I especially think cheese makes everything delicious.

But you can, certainly, use other things.

What did we fill them with before?

Meat.

Meat, you can do it like a hamburger, like a sausage.

Ham.

Ham, I know you like ham.

We do all kinds of crazy raviolis here.

I think the first time we made them, we tried making pepperoni ravioli.

Oh, yeah.

Those were pretty good.

They made pepperoni pizza raviolis.

We put pepperoni and sausage inside, and they were delicious.

So again, it's just kind of a fun way to experiment with the flavors that you like.

And then you get to be the chef and you get to decide what to put in it.

I mean, until you suggested pepperoni ravioli, I never even thought of that.

But you like pepperoni, and that's how it worked.

It was good.

All right, so I'm going to make three big ravioli for mine.

How about you?

Oh, that looks good.

Yeah, I probably could do three.

I think you can.

Do we have to make it into a rectangle?

It doesn't have to be perfect, so you're OK the way you are.

See, mine's kind of round, still.

Oh, that looks really good, Luca.

Nice.

So these don't need to be perfect.

And there's always this tendency, when I make raviolis, to overfill them, and you don't want to do that.

Don't overstuff them.

Put less than you think it needs to be full, because if you overstuff them, when you boil them, they will explode.

And then you'll be bummed and you'll have to start all over again.

Let's try three ravioli's for you.

So what we're making is very rustic raviolis.

They're not going to be perfect.

They're going to look like handmade.

And frankly, I think that's what makes them taste better.

So now we take our bottom half and we're going to fold it over.

And you know what, wait-- I'm sorry, wait.

Before you do that, you know what would really help?

If you put your finger in this water and you paint around.

This is like finger painting.

Paint a little square around the little cheese, the little ricotta cheese dollop or whatever you filled them with.

The water is going to help the dough stick to itself so they will not explode on you, if you have not overfilled them.

All right, now, you've painted squares around every single cheese dollop.

And now we'll fold them over.

I almost forgot that very important step.

Now take your fingers.

These are your best tools in the whole kitchen.

And just gently press around the pillows of ricotta cheese, and in the middle, too.

All right.

So just press that dough together so that it's sticking to itself and it's making a little pillow of ricotta.

And that is going to taste so delicious.

Now depending on how big you want your ravioli to be or how perfect you want them to be, at this point, you can do a couple of things, you've got to make some decisions.

Do you want these kind of ravioli, which, you can see, have a lot of extra pasta around them, and they're not perfect, and that's OK. Or do you want to try to take something like a pizza cutter.

Do you want a pizza cutter for yours?

Sure.

Cool.

This is a special pizza cutter.

It has a zigzag edge on it.

So it's going to make them really pretty.

So you can also use that instead to cut them a little more perfectly, if you're a person who likes perfectly square ravioli.

These are handmade.

They're not made by a machine, so they're never going to be perfect.

And that is absolutely great, because it shows everybody that you're cooking for that you made them with your own hands and your own love, and I think that's really important.

So the great thing about ravioli is, now that we've done this work, they cook up in a minute and a half.

Fresh ravioli is the easiest, quickest thing to cook, right?

Hey, those look really nice.

Thanks.

Do you want to use this, or do you want to use that?

I already finished.

That's awesome.

I'm going to throw a couple of these in the stove.

I've got a pot of boiling water behind me.

So when we started this process, I went ahead and put the water to boil with some salt in it on the stove.

So that's already ready to go.

All you got to do is throw these in the boiling water, and when they float to the top in about a minute and a half, they're done.

Wait, what temperature is the water?

The temperature of the water boiling?

That's a really good question.

I think you all should look that up at home.

Water boils at, I think, 220.

Something close to that.

So that water is very, very hot.

So you definitely want to have somebody supervising this process.

You can make-- 220 degrees.

And you can make more ravioli's with the excess-- with the extra stuff?

You can make more if you have extra.

Yes, you can.

In fact, if you roll that out again, we can show them how to make linguine really fast.

We could.

We could.

I'm going to throw these in the boiling water for a second and we'll let those cook right up.

And you have your sauce ready to go, so when they come out, you're ready to eat.

So what Jackson just said is totally right.

All that scrap, all that left over from the outside edges that we cut off, we can reroll into a different shape or a different kind of pasta, which is perfect.

And I made some linguine earlier today so you could see how that would look.

These are just-- they're getting kind of dry now because I made them earlier, and that's more like a dried pasta that you get out of a box, and that's fine.

These are just strings of linguine.

See?

And we cut those with a knife, really thin.

But there are tools that you can buy that would cut the whole thing all at once, and you'd get 20 strands of linguine at a time, which is super fun.

But I think these are really pretty.

You can also make these in a pasta machine, of course, if you have one.

But you don't need one.

If you're going to hand cut them, you can also make them, like, wide strips of noodles.

And those are really fun if you have a delicious sauce that you can-- those look nice.

We might want them to be thinner, a little bit.

So you can always reroll.

That's a great thing about this pasta dough, there's no mistakes.

You can always just crumble it up and start again.

So we should show them how they look when they're done, huh?

Yeah.

These look really nice, guys.

So I'll show you, this is a plate we made a little bit earlier today.

These are some kind of neat raviolis that we cut out very carefully with the zigzag roller.

But again, it does not need to be neat at all.

They can be rustic, they'll still be delicious.

And I think you'll really enjoy these with your family.

This is a sage butter sauce with a little bit of lemon in it to let you know that when you're going to bite into this ricotta, the ricotta has some lemon, too.

So I kind of like to use garnish that tells you what's happening inside the recipe, too.

But this could easily also have tomato sauce on it or an Alfredo or a wine sauce or just butter and Parmesan.

[upbeat music] Right?

That's what you like.

Yeah, I like Parmesan.

Yeah.

Those look really nice, Luca.

Thanks.

You guys did a great job.

I hope you enjoy this with your family and I hope you'll make pasta with your family.

Thank you so much for joining us today in our kitchen.

It was really fun to have you here with us, and we'll see you again next time.

Support for Amy LaBelle's Cooking With Kids is provided by AutoFair, Cook Little Rosenblatt & Manson, DF Richard Energy, Granite State Development Corporation, New England Dairy, Northeast Delta Dental, Stonyfield Organic, Unitil, Enterprise Bank, White Mountains Community College, Monadnock Food Co-Op, Macaroni Kid Seed Co., and viewers like you.

Thank you.

[orchestra music]