Here’s another pasta that we’ve recently had fun making on our new extruder:  rigatoni!  Rigatoni is a pretty standard noodle, so we thought it would be a good idea to pair it with a simple sauce – especially since using the extruder is a bit of a complicated and laborious process, so it’s nice to give yourself a little bit of a break at the end of a day of pasta making  Luckily we found this recipe from the New York Times, which is recommended for a hearty shape like rigatoni.  We enjoyed all the flavor that comes out from just a few easy ingredients, and we’ll show you how you can make this for yourself, from pasta dough to finished product.

You’ll need:

• Semolina flour
• 1/2 of a stick of butter
• Mint
• Parmesan cheese

To make your rigatoni, follow the first two steps here, except set up a rigatoni die on your extruder, run the mixer at a 6 speed, and cut the noodles off at a length of 1 1/2 inches.

You’ll want to let the pasta dry for at least 3 hours on baking sheets lined with parchment paper that’s been dusted with more semolina.  When you’re ready to cook up the pasta, boil it for about 5 minutes in salted water, make sure to scoop out and set aside 1/2 cup of the cooking water, then drain the rigatoni and place it into a large mixing bowl.  Cut your butter into pieces, chop about 1/2 cup of mint leaves, and grate up a cup of Parmesan.  Add all this to the mixing bowl, plus salt and pepper to taste, and gently stir together.

And that’s it!  Now you can serve up the rigatoni with extra Parmesan on top.

Like we said – the sauce is super simple.  Making the pasta from scratch does take some time, plus patience to let it dry, but after that all you have to do is a tiny amount of prep work, then cook the pasta and stir everything together and you’ve got yourself some rigatoni.  And if you’re wondering about how it tastes, the mint pairs very well with the classic combo of butter and Parmesan.  We usually think of mint as a dessert flavor, to be paired with something sweet, but here it turns into a nice savory taste to wrap around the thick rigatoni.  Of course you can pair this with some boxed pasta as well, but we enjoyed making everything from start to finish, and this is a great way to cook up some extruded pasta.