Making pasta is CHILD’S PLAY

By AMY SCATTERGOOD

That kids love pasta is one of those parenting truisms that begins as relief (easy, cheap), graduates to fatigue and culminates in parody.

I still remember the Year of the Noodle in which my daughter ate almost nothing but milk and buttered ziti. Instead of fighting this (it won’t work), try harnessing it. Ask, what would Marcella do? Marcella Hazan, that is, the go-to Italian cookbook writer and authority in my house.

Making your own pasta is fun, a lot easier than it sounds, and your children will probably love it too. What kid doesn’t love playing with food? Pasta-making is like a kid’s project anyway. Mix flour and eggs into something that resembles Play-Doh. Roll it out, cut into funny shapes, boil it and eat it under a spoonful of sauce.

Kids are more likely to eat something they’ve made than food that magically appears in front of them. And with ownership comes responsibility — not just for eating what’s on their plates, but also for cleaning up and helping with the dishes.

If your kids make the sauce, so much the better. You also can let them squash the dough by hand for 20 minutes or press the buttons on a food processor, which can be equally rewarding.

Similarly, rolling out dough is fun for some, but they fight over who gets to crank the handle on the pasta machine.

Ready for sauce

If dinner needs to be on the table fast, let the kids crank out a nest of fettuccine with the machine. Fresh pasta cooks in minutes, so all you need is a dab of butter, a splash of olive oil and a grating of Parmesan — and dinner’s done.

If you have more time, let the sheets of pasta dry a little (this makes them easier to cut). Give the kids a fluted pasta cutter, a pizza wheel or a pair of kitchen shears, and let them cut out “pappardelle” (broad noodles, an inch wide, traditionally with rippled edges).

While one kid is finishing the pappardelle (or cutting trimmings into smiley faces), another can get started on pesto. Pesto is a kid-friendly sauce that doesn’t require cooking, and the cheese and nuts provide a good amount of protein.

You can make pesto in a blender. Put the kids in charge of adding ingredients and pushing the buttons. Kids love blenders because they’re loud; just be sure someone has a firm hand on the lid.

Or use a mortar and pestle. There’s a lovely Flintstones quality to these tools — especially the ones made of granite — that kids will appreciate maybe more than you do. Pesto works up quickly and is virtually foolproof.

I make pesto with pine nuts, since I’ve noticed that if I toast extra nuts, my daughter eats them like popcorn while she’s making the sauce. If your kid likes walnuts, which are cheaper, use them instead.

You can divide up cooking tasks according to skill sets and interest. My 10-year-old and 7-year-old love cutting pasta noodles and grinding things with the mortar and pestle. Younger kids tend to get a charge out of pushing buttons and making noise, while older ones often appreciate the opportunity to show off (supervised) knife skills.

Cook the pasta, then let the kids serve themselves (and you), by lifting out drained noodles from the colander. Use kitchen tongs if you have them — kids just love these things — and add a spoonful of pesto, a sprinkling of pine nuts, a dollop of fresh ricotta and a handful of cherry tomatoes.

Use half the pasta dough for dinner, then roll out the other half into slightly thinner sheets, cut into pappardelle and dry them overnight over the back of a chair. The next morning, cook the dried pasta and make a breakfast kugel. Or save the dried pasta in a plastic bag — broken into pieces, it’s terrific in a pasta e fagioli soup.)

Breakfast option

A kugel is a Jewish noodle pudding, like a baked mac ’n’ cheese, which can be made either sweet, with dried fruit and cinnamon, or savory, with cheese and onions, maybe garlic. Your fresh pasta needs to be dried overnight to give it enough texture to hold up during 50 minutes of baking. The resulting dish is tender and moist, like a delicate lasagna.

Laced with apples, currants and walnuts, with mascarpone in the custard and spiced brown sugar scattered over the top like crumble topping, kugel is a dish that kids will love for breakfast.

A slice of the kugel, with extra mascarpone and a cup of coffee, is a tasty time-out for grown-ups, too.

And if you’re still sweeping flour off the floor, or pulling stray noodles from the wall, you might make that a large cup of coffee.