The Process

Sometimes, the outcome is not what you’d hoped for but the novelty of having ever tried in the first place redeems the experience.

Apparently Teddy Roosevelt, on his first buffalo hunt in the Dakotas’ Badlands (a trip that, by the way, partly fueled his devotion to national parks), lived for the process. After days in the blistering sun, little to drink, rain soaked camping blankets, nothing but dry biscuits to eat, and not a single successful shot, Roosevelt enthusiastically proclaimed, “By Godfrey, but this is fun!”

And that’s how I felt about my new pasta machine.

Don’t get me wrong, Yotam Ottolenghi’s instructions for Saffron tagliatelle with spiced butter (from his book, Plenty), are very good. The fragrant butter sauce is exciting, and the turmeric-stained pasta dough is flawless. It’s just that I’ve never used a pasta machine. And I’m afraid that in the end, the resulting meal was more like Spaetzle (a slightly gummy, sticky German squirt noodle), and less like a delicate tagliatelle.

Perhaps one day, when I’ve perfected the art of cranking out my own pasta, I will share some version of the recipe. But for now, here are some photos of The Process.

All photographs by Andrew Budziak