Several years ago my friend, my sister and I went to Ethiopia to teach some classes. One of my lessons was on pasta making, since there are many Italian restaurants in Addis Ababa that boast handmade pasta. I decided to go with a bow-tie shape, since it's basically a papardelle squinched in the middle. Two for one.
Well, what a mess! There was flour EVERYWHERE! All over the tables and floor, stepped into the carpet. I was aghast. The ladies didn't seem to be shocked, after all someone gets paid to clean up; but I couldn't handle it, so my sister and I were sweeping, scrubbing... ugh. And the supposed bow-tie forms were, well, one needed an imagination to see them for what they should have been. (There was one lady whose were perfect. When I commented, she said that she had worked in a restaurant making pasta once upon a time.)
Fast forward to today. Pumpkin offered to teach me how to make Chinese dumplings. First of all, we made the filling: She had bought mushrooms (Ay!) for the purpose. Then, the dough had to be rolled out with this tricky Chinese granny method, that of course eluded me. Then there was a vocabulary issue: I was told to make the middle thinner and the edges thicker, when it was actually the opposite. Which we quickly figured out, thankfully. And then there was the filling, pinching and shaping of the dumplings. Shoo! I had flour EVERYWHERE! I was covered! Meanwhile, Pumpkin was in her cute work clothes, with nary a dusting of flour. I settled on a tortellini shape, because that's the closest I could come to the Granny-pinch.
When it came time to boil them, I insisted that Pumpkin cook hers first and separately, since I was certain that mine were going to explode. In the end, only one of mine broke open AND the very thin pasta looked quite nice. As Pumpkin's granny told her when she was learning this art at the age of ten, "Even if it's ugly, it can still be delicious."
