Been carrying around a Pottery Barn gift card which I received from my lovely co-workers in North Carolina before I left for California. Two years ago. Luckily it works at Williams-Sonoma too, I just didn’t have a need for any high end culinary supplies since then. I know, shame on me.

Anyway, I decided it was time to not carry it around in my wallet for another year, so last weekend I stopped by Williams-Sonoma’s amazing multilevel flagship store in Union Square to see if I couldn’t invent some needs.

I started picking up a few odds and ends—seemed like it wouldn’t be too long before I’d use it up—when I saw the hand crank pasta machine. I immediately thought back to a recent conversation I’d had with bread- and pasta-lover Stephanie about making our own. At the time I thought that’d be a reason enough to get the envy of every homemaker: a Kitchenaid mixer. I hadn’t known about this though.

So I wandered up to the cookbook section and pulled out a book on making pasta. It had all these beautiful pictures with informative writing, and a whole section devoted to fresh pasta, which I read right there. Clearly my need had found me. Got the book, the pasta maker, a pasta brush, and a tool for cutting ravioli.

Later that night we put the machine to good use making our first batch of fettuccine. It took some time before we felt comfortable with it, but there’s nothing more fun that just turning the crank and watching a plug of dough get sucked through the rollers and come out a uniform thickness on the other side. We kneaded the dough using the machine at the widest setting, and then progressively shortened the distance between the rollers, making the sheet of pasta thinner and longer. Definitely helped having four hands. Once it was thin enough we rolled it through the attached cutting rollers and out came fresh fettuccine.

Which then went into a pot of salted boiling water, and eventually found it’s way into two bowls of delectable pasta carbonara (with mushrooms, asparagus, and prosciutto). Just don’t tell Mario.