Fresh Fettuccine with Shrimp and Basil Sauce

We recently decided that we had a little problem with over-indulging in kitchen gadget purchases.  Really, they involve Will's engineering mind and needing the just perfect device for each cooking experience.  I've already mentioned the croissant cutter (click here for the post).  Previous Christmas, it was a knife sharpener which sat unused for over a year and which resulted in me threatening never EVER to make another kitchen purchase until he used it.  (He did, and now our knives are amazingly sharp!)

Anyway, one Christmas many years ago, Will asked for a pasta maker.  I suppose it's more a pasta roller and cutter.  You make the pasta dough yourself and then roll endless disks through the device and then eventually cut the sheets of pasta into fettuccine or tagliatelle.  At first, we really enjoyed making fresh pasta dishes, once we discovered how fresh pasta cooks so quickly and has a wonderful texture--soft yet al dente at the same time.  Whoo-hoo!

But then the pasta maker also sat unused for years as we got into other gadgets.  (We are indeed gadget tramps!)  This past Sunday, when Will asked me what I'd like for dinner, I suggested fresh pasta.  We had the ingredients we needed already for the sauce we had in mind, and I was looking forward to a slightly special Sunday dinner that wasn't too filling (like a "Sunday roast").  Will got to work on making fettuccine.  (We actually use the "tagilatelle" cutter, but the width is what we in the U.S. associate with "fettuccine.")

We used a recipe for a creamy shrimp, tomato, and basil sauce (our favorite sauce with this pasta) we get from William Sonoma's Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings cookbook, and presto!  Yummy post-Valentine dinner!