How to Make Pasta & Influence People...

One thing I’ve always wanted to do was make my own pasta. It seems a really complicated and impressive process best left to Italian Mammas, but when we received a pasta machine as a wedding gift, I was more than delighted to give it a bash.

I consulted my trusty Jamie Oliver recipe book and then realised how simple it was - clearly there was some sort of conspiracy afoot. Just eggs and flour. Who knew? A fair bit of elbow grease is admittedly involved but what you get is delicious, silky sheets of golden goodness. And it cooks much quicker than traditional dried pasta. Lasagne in 15 minutes? Done!  

Recipe – Courtesy the Naked Chef

500g Tipo ‘00’ Flour (to be honest I just used stock standard cake flour and sieved it twice)

5 eggs (Add some extra egg yolks if you’d like a richer pasta)

¥       Bung out your sieved flour onto your work surface

¥       Make a well in the middle

¥       Crack in your eggs

¥       Get mixing (this is where the elbow grease comes in)

¥       Separate your dough into 3 balls, cover with cling wrap and put them in the fridge for
   30min (again the suspense was killing me and I took them out after about 10 minutes
   and it still worked – I tell you this is flop proof!)

¥       Place your machine on its thickest setting

¥       Flatten the ball slightly and send through the machine a few times

¥       Gradually make the settings smaller as you send the pasta through.

¥       On its smallest setting, send the pasta through until a lovely, shiny sheet is produced.

¥       Voila! Pasta!

You can cut it into tagliatelle, sheets of lasagne, or send it through the linguini setting of your machine. Whatever you do, rest assured it will be delicious! And not to mention give you some culinary kudos.