My family has scattered to the four corners of the earth. Well – more like the 2.5 corners of the earth. My brother got on a plane to Korea last week and most of my family moved to the middle of Washington on Sunday. It has been a tiring and emotional couple of weeks. I hate saying goodbye, however temporarily or short term. Thankfully two of my sisters are staying on this side of the state! Rosie moved in with Ayla and Tasha and my sister Hannah moved in for the summer with an American family from church! (We’re trying to get her to stay up here for longer than just the summer.)

One of our sister & Ayla goals for the summer is to make dinner together once a week. It will be a challenge because we all have pretty different schedules – but we’ve already succeeded once! Last night we had the welcome addition of the youngest member of Hannah’s host family join us…

For dinner I made fresh gluten-free, corn-free pasta! Yummy Ayla actually did all of the hard work, she rolled it all out while I worked on the sauces.  The recipe I used for this pasta is an adaptation of a recipe from the Gluten-Free Girl – Shauna Ahern.

Note: When working with gluten-free flours and adjusting recipes, it is important to use weight instead of volume to measure them. That is why I have the weight of each flour in this recipe. I also used only guar gum instead of a combination of guar and xanthan gum because xanthan gum is a byproduct of corn.

1.25oz amaranth flour

1.25oz millet flour

2.125oz potato starch

2.5oz quinoa flour

3 tsp guar gum

1 tsp fine sea salt

2 large eggs

4 egg yolks from large eggs

Combine the dry ingredients in a medium bowl, make a well in center and pour in the whisked eggs and egg yolks. Stir together with a fork until mostly combined. Using your hands, knead remaining dry ingredients into the dough until it is completely incorporated. You will know the dough is complete when it feels kind of like playdough. If you don’t know what playdough feels like – I feel sorry for you.

After making the dough you can use either a pasta maker or a rolling pin to roll the dough into thin sheets. Either way – tear the dough into golf ball sized pieces, flatten with your hands and dust with a little millet or quinoa flour to limit the stickiness. Roll each piece as thin as you can before it starts to tear. Gluten-free dough is much more delicate then regular dough but as long as you pay attention and work a little slower – you shouldn’t have any problems. The nice thing about it is even if it does fall apart you can just squish it back together and start over! After rolling the dough out, use either a knife or a pizza cutter or the fettuccine setting on the pasta machine to cut each piece into ribbons of pasta! As the pasta starts to pile up be sure to toss it with a little flour so that it won’t end up a ball of dough when you are ready to cook it. Always cook pasta in a largish pot with plenty of salted boiling water. You want the pasta to be able to roll around freely and not stick to itself. Salt the water until it tastes like sea water. That gives your pasta extra flavor! This pasta is done cooking very quickly so you want to check it after it’s been cooking for just a few minutes. You don’t want it to be over cooked because it will just turn to mush. When done, drain it and add a little olive oil to prevent it from sticking.

To top the pasta I made two different sauces. The red sauce was made with canned grape tomatoes, tomato paste, sauteed garlic and onions, white wine, spinach, diced zucchini and sea salt. Delish I also made a seafood sauce that used two cans each of Trader Joes crab and shrimp (including the juices), lots of butter with sauteed garlic, onions, leeks and mushrooms, as well as white wine and sea salt. At the very end I added half a pint of heavy cream and kept it on the heat just long enough to get hot.

Even Hannah liked this sauce and she doesn’t like seafood! We also sauteed some asparagus in butter and salt and ate that on the side.

All in all it was a great evening, especially because we were able to Skype with the family and get a tour of the new house!

I wonder what we’re having for dinner next week?