Fresh pasta with Bolognese sauce

Oh Pioneer woman, I envy your life.... I want that big ol kitchen, I want to live on a farm, have a Marlboro man as a husband... haha anyway, her website has been the inspiration for this meal. I've been itching to make Bolognese sauce for the entire summer break... (I just figured out what it was last month... haha)  I used both of her recipes for it, and it was probably the best pasta dish I've ever made. I was in love with the noodles, and equally in love with the sauce. I went down to the store and grabbed just a pound of ground beef, some san marzano tomatoes, a carrot, and purple italian onion. I wanted to make sure I used quality ingredients because I know that this will serve as quick meals for my weeks to come.. and I wanted the taste to be phenomenal so that I'd want to eat it again... and trust me, I do want to eat it again... I took so many samples from the pot for the 2 hours it stewed...it was that good....

Changes to the recipe -
Recipe : http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/05/ryans-bolognese-sauce/
Bolognese Sauce- I halved it. 3/4 pound lean ground beef  + 4 oz chopped white mushrooms, I added more spices... and the way I do it... isn't quite an exact science... I season to taste! Three shakes of cayenne pepper, two shakes of red chili flakes, one shake of ground cloves, and 2+ tbsp Worcestershire sauce. For the wine, I used a blend of merlot, and pinot noir, my merlot seem to have gone a bit funky, so I decided to open up a fresh bottle of pinot noir and dumps some in. That really added to the richness of the sauce.... Over my numerous taste tests... I would find that the sauce lacked the acidity that I wanted in a sauce... so I'd just pour a bit more Worcestershire sauce in it.. since that had vinegar. Maybe next time, I'll reduce the milk a bit.... and use a combination of turkey and beef.

Recipe : http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/05/homemade-pasta/
Pasta- I made pasta for one.... it's such a labor intensive procedure I didn't want to make any more... but the sad part is..... I thought my bread machine would mix it up... it didn't... due to the small volume... and so I moved it to my KA mixer.... and that didn't do much.... so then I ended up kneading it by hand.... (so many things to clean now!!!! :( ) which is fine.. but I get impatient, and I really should have let it rest for a while before I rolled it out. This time, I rolled it out super thin, so thin that I could see the shadows of my marble pastry board through it... any thinner, then I'd be risking breakage... and that's not something that I want to deal with. The pasta cooked up perfectly in around 3 minutes. I timed it for 2.. but it wasn't at the al dente stage yet. Another note is that many recipes tell people to super salt the water for the pasta... I just found that kind of unnecessary... I did use a lot of salt.. but then my pasta tasted like salt water... iono I guess I'm not a fan of salty pasta... especially since the sauce is so flavorful... I want to make the pasta sauce shine... not the salt from the pasta water...

After rolling it out as thin as you can, fold it in half, the less times you fold it
the less time you spend unfolding it... 

With a long sharp knife, make a single cut 

Carefully unfold it!

Hang it unit it's ready to be cooked, ideally it should be cooked immediately, or it will dry
to a brittle pasta, but that can be stored for a few weeks! ... I dried a few strands to test it out

Grab it by the bundle and drop it into boiling water for 2-3 minutes!