"O Madonna mia!" I can hear my Uncle Gerardo yelling when I ask him about the KitchenAid Pasta Maker Attachment Kit, also known as the KitchenAid KPEX, short for KitchenAid Pasta Excellence kit. Uncle Gerardo has a love/hate relationship with all things KitchenAid.
He loves KitchenAid because he owns an Italian restaurant. And he hates KitchenAid-because he owns an Italian restaurant! He both loves and hates the KitchenAid Pasta Maker attachment kit in particular because the Kitchen Aid Pasta Excellence Kit takes the drudgery of making pasta and turns into a simple three step process.
How to Make Pasta with the KitchenAid Pasta Maker Attachment Kit
Make the pasta dough. This is as simple as mixing bread, water, eggs and salt in the bowl of the KitchenAid stand mixer using the dough blade.
Feed the dough through the pasta sheet roller attachment. The most important thing to look out for is that the dough is not too moist. If it's too moist it will stick to the attachment. Not good.
Once you've got your sheet of pasta, feed it through the appropriate pasta cutter attachment. That is, for spaghetti, use the spaghetti cutter and for fettucini, use the fettucini cutter. The caveat here is that you should start off with a thick setting, then gradually move down to the thickness you want. Don't go right to the desired thickness, that will not usually work. Better to take your time here.
And for most pastas, that's it! It's done entirely by the machine. There's only one instance where you have to get manual, and that's when you make ravioli. But ravioli is a different process altogether. When you make ravioli, you are basically making a bunch of 'cheese sandwiches' with pasta as the bread. You have to lay out a sheet of pasta, place the cheese over it in dollops, then place the second sheet of pasta on top, press, and cut-then you've got your ravioli. It's actually pretty simple, too, once you get the hang of it.
