Tagliatelle noodle Arlecchino's style

Carnival is near and one of my favourite types of Italian pasta is Tagliatelle. For this reason I decide to prepare coloured Tagliatelle and I called them Tagliatelle Arlecchino's style seasoned with a ragù of tomato and minced meat of veal. The preparation of coloured tagliatelle is exactly the same of classical tagliatelle where for each 100 g of flour you use 1 egg; the only different thing here is that you need to add something to give colour to your tagliatelle. In this case I used spinach for green tagliatelle, saffron for yellow tagliatelle, red pepper for red tagliatelle and unsweetened cacao powder for brown tagliatelle.

INGREDIENTS for 1 Kg of Tagliatelle hand-made:

400g of flour

4 eggs

50 g of Spinach

1 Red pepper

1 Teaspoon of unsweetened cacao powder

Saffron

INGREDIENTS for ragu:

250 g of minced meat of veal

750 ml of tomato sauce

1 carrot

1 onion

1 celery

3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

PREPARATION TIME: 1 hour

COOKING TIME: 40 minutes

WINE: Chianti (Red WIne)

PREPARATION

Let the salted water boil for tagliatelle. Divide the flour in 4 portions of 100g each in order to prepare tagliatelle of 4 different colours (yellow, green, red and brown). To prepare yellow tagliatelle place 100g of flour on a bowl, add 1 egg and the saffron and mix to obtain homogeneous yellow dough. 

To prepare green tagliatelle you first need to boil and drain the spinach removing very well all the excess of water. Then blend the spinach. Place in a bowl 100g of flour, 1 egg and the blended spinach, mix all together to obtain green homogenous dough. 

To prepare the red dough you need to blend a red pepper, then place in a bowl 100g of flour, 1 egg and 1 tablespoon of the blended red pepper (the pepper in excess you can use it in the preparation of the ragu), mix all together to obtain an homogeneous red dough. 

Finally to prepare the brown dough place in a bowl 100 g of flour, 1 egg and 1 teaspoon of unsweetened cacao powder, mix all together to obtain homogeneous brown dough. 

Let the 4 doughs stand for a while, in the mean time start the preparation of the ragu sauce.

Mince the carrot, the onion and the celery. Preheat the extra virgin olive oil in a soup pot, add the minced vegetables and let them cook for 5 minutes. 

Then add the minced meat of veal and let it sauté foe a few minutes. 

Now add the tomato sauce and stir, continue to cook the ragu for 30-40 minutes stirring time by time.

Now prepare tagliatelle. You can use a rolling pin to roll out the pasta or more easily you can use the machine for pasta as I did for this recipe. If you use the rolling pin you have to roll out a thin and long pastry, when this is ready you can roll up the pastry and cut it in thin strips. Otherwise if you use the machine for pasta follow the picture below. Remember to use a lot of flour in order to not let the dough attach to the machine. Work each dough with the machine until you obtain a long and thin pastry. When the pastry is ready, pass it on the cutter for tagliatelle as I shown below. 

When the tagliatelle are ready, divide them in small group of 6-8 tagliatelle each and roll them up in small nests. Sprinkle with flour in order to not let them attach each other. 

Proceed in the same way for all the 4-coloured dough. When tagliatelle are ready and the salted water boils, let them boil for 6-8 minutes. Drain tagliatelle and pour on them the ragu.

Serve tagliatelle hot with Parmesan on the top if you like.

BUON APPETITO!