With my first try at making homemade pasta, one thing was immediately clear: pasta-making is the epitome of "easy to learn, hard to master." I used the instructions from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, a book I highly recommend for its meticulous discussion of pasta-making and other Italian cooking techniques. She painstakingly describes, down to the curve of your palm and the turn of the rolling pin, the movements used to knead, roll and shape the pasta dough.

Dough doesn't get much simpler than this: two eggs per cup of flour. Methods, on the other hand, don't get much more nuanced. While I attempted the motions Hazan describes, I felt like I was simultaneously rubbing my tummy and patting my head - while riding a unicycle. But I bumbled through, in the end producing something roughly akin to fettuccine.

I am glad I did, because the resulting pasta was, without an iota of exaggeration, sublime. Despite its uneven shape and the many places it stuck to itself, this pasta had a life and a vibrancy that made it addictive. It sprung up, on the tongue and the palate; its firm, smooth bite matched by a fresh, rich flavor. I'm a long-time fan of a little neighborhood shop that turns out fresh pasta in a variety of shapes and flavors, but I might be converted to doing this by hand. (But Capone's is still the next best to doing it yourself!)

To be honest, I think I owe the amazing texture and flavor of this pasta to the use of fresh eggs from local pastured chickens. These eggs have an excellent flavor, and are generally only a day or two old when they reach my fridge, meaning that they still have a very firm white. I haven't tried this with conventional eggs, though, so I can't be sure.