Greens Fettuccine

This recipe's been adapted to utilize my leftover cooking greens, not spinach, as the original recipe requires. It's from Lidia's Family Table, by Lydia Bastianach. This is time consuming, but the results are really delicious, and you can freeze the pasta.

Greens Fettuccine

adapted from Lidia's Family Table
Serves 8

You'll Need:

• 10 oz raw greens (if you don't have a food scale, i measured my 10 ozs and got 10 packed pyrex measuring cups worth of greens)*
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 eggs (large)
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• a large pot to boil water
• a food processor
• a rolling pin
• a pasta maker, or you could roll and cut your pasta by hand
• a cookie sheet and extra flour (for freezing the pasta)

*The night before you make your dough, boil water and submerge the greens for 5 minutes. Drain and let cool. Remove as much moisture as you can. Gather handfuls of the greens and squeeze with all your might. Then wrap the greens in paper towels and squeeze to remove even more moisture. And then, when you're done with that, leave them to dry out even more overnight. And the next morning, squeeze them out again. Seriously.

To make dough:

Add spinach to food processor and blend until smooth. Use spatula to clean off the sides of the processor.

Add flour to spinach, pulsing to combine, until all flour is mixed evenly with spinach.
Whisk eggs, egg yolks and olive oil together.
With processor running, slowly add the egg mixture, blending with the spinach and flour, approx 30 seconds.
Stop processor and scrape sides. Process again for 30 more seconds, or until dough begins to ball up on the blade.

Turn dough out on a floured surface and knead until smooth (This only took a few minutes for me). Wrap dough in plastic wrap or seal in plastic bag and let rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.

If you have a pasta machine, follow manufactures directions on how to make the pasta shape of your choice. We chose fettuccine. If you don't have a machine, you could hand-cut your pasta into many different shapes and sizes, or roll them into flat sheets to use for making lasagna.

If you'd like to freeze your pasta and you've made long pasta (like fettuccine or spaghetti):

Flour a cookie sheet. Gently gather a handful of pasta and "nest" it by twisting as you place the pasta on the sheet. Repeat for the rest of the pasta, and place in the freezer. Once the nests are set, transfer to a sealable plastic bag or container. These should keep for 3 months.

You could also keep the pasta in the fridge for a few days, or eat right away.

NOTE: Fresh pasta cooks much faster than dried, between 1-3 minutes.