Sei Italiano?

So, I've decided to leave the corporate kitchen, and head to a smaller place in my neighborhood that has been receiving excellent reviews. It's a small place, with a female chef who is a self-described "surfer girl" from Southern California. I'm excited to get a chance to work with her finally. Not much cooking going on around the house lately. Although, I have a plan to buy this pasta machine that I've been eyeing for a while. There's nothing like having an uneventful pasta dish (in this case lasagna made for comida) to make one want to go straight home and create a better version. So, now I've got a hankering to make lasagna, but I'm going to have to make my own pasta sheets, of course. And to think, I used to be limited to the world of only dried lasagna sheets (or the dreaded no-boil pasta....I know, I should be shot). Once you fall for fresh pasta, it's all over. No longer will you be able to choke down the horrible Italian-American flabby noodle and red sauce dishes you used to think were pasta. We're talking the real deal here. And let's not even get into risotto. I couldn't bring myself to buy the pasta attachment for the Kitchen Aide, which allows the cook to let the machine do all of the tiresome rolling. There's a certain romantic aspect of hand-rolled pasta that completely loses it with a machine-rolled, machine-powered noodle.

And on a side note, you have to hear this author/blogger's opinion of Rachel Ray and Food Network stars