Homemade pasta, a perfect cooking project for kids

That kids love pasta is one of those parenting truisms that begins as relief (it's easy, it's cheap), quickly graduates to fatigue, and usually 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 food 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 a bit like a kid's project anyway. Mix flour and eggs together into something that resembles Play-Doh. Then roll it out, cut it into funny shapes, boil it and eat it under a spoonful of sauce.

As parents, chef-instructors and dietitians know, kids are more likely to eat something they've made themselves 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.

One of the great things about making homemade pasta these days (as opposed to the days of your Neapolitan great-grandmother) is that you have some nifty little tools to help you out if you want them. You can have your kids squash the dough by hand for 20 minutes of remember-when-you-did-this-with-mud fun. Or they can press the buttons on a food processor, which can be equally rewarding.

Similarly, rolling out the dough with a rolling pin is fun for some -- my kids usually get bored and leave before the pasta is thin enough. But they still fight over who gets to crank the handle on the Atlas pasta machine.

Ready for sauce

Once the dough is rolled out, you have a lot of options.

If the kids are hitting a low-blood-sugar wall and dinner needs to be on the table fast, just have them 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 pretty much done.

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

Next, maybe while one kid is finishing up the pappardelle (or cutting the trimmings into smiley faces), another can get started on pesto. Pesto is a great kid-friendly sauce that doesn't require any 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. Blenders are great because they're loud; just be sure someone has a firm hand on the lid.

Or if you have one, use a mortar and pestle. There's a lovely Flintstones quality to these things -- especially the ones made out of blocks of Thai granite -- that kids will appreciate even more than you do. The pesto works up quickly and is virtually foolproof. You can teach your progeny how to use a pretty cool kitchen tool -- while reminding them about pre-high-tech gadgets.