Delicious Margaret River

Almost two months ago, we took a weekend trip to Margaret River, which is somewhere about 4 hours south of Perth.   There's not that much to see or do in Margaret River, if visiting vineyards, wine tasting, and having leisurely meals at local restaurants is not really something you enjoy. Otherwise, it's an area with rich pickings for all those activities!  

Thanks to the economic recession and the slew of discounts being offered on most airlines, we got ourselves a pretty sweet deal to Perth. (But of course, since then, we've noticed that prices have fallen even more!).  From Perth we rented a car and drove south to Margaret River.  Three and a half days were barely enough for taking everything in at a leisurely pace, but just sufficient to acquaint myself with some delicious wineries and tasty restaurants.

Home made Pasta

Some weekends ago, I had a few old college friends over for a pasta making night. It's been five (gosh, almost six) years that I've owned my pasta machine and I hadn't used it! So it was about time I did so. I prepped the dough beforehand and everyone had a hand in the preparation. We made gnocchi and ravioli , both served with a simple (also home-made) garlic, tomato and parsley sauce. I also made the ravioli filling beforehand from minced pork, spinach, olive oil and camembert cheese. YS and SY had fun with the pasta machine, rolling out thin sheets of dough with YJ and O helped to fill the raviolis. Ben and ST struggled a little with getting the gnocchi to the right consistency, but we did it in the end! We paired the pasta with a delicious homemade salad that YS and SY brought and ended our meal with some fresh chopped strawberries and nectarines, finished with a dollop of cream.

What you'll need -
3.5 - 4 cups of flour, 4 large eggs, 1 yolk,
1.5 tsp olive oil

Make a pile with the flour and then using your hands, make a well within the pile of flour.
Add the wet ingredients and slowly mix in the flour. It's going to look really messy but it will form a dough shortly. When a dough is formed, knead for about 6 minutes and then let it rest for 30mins. It's now ready to shape into pasta!