Homemade pasta

Serves:

Ingredients

• 250g pasta flour
• 2 eggs
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 pinch salt

Method

Sift flour and a generous pinch of salt onto a clean worksurface and form it into a mound with a well in the centre.

Crack whole eggs into a cup and slide into the well. Add extra virgin olive oil.

Using a fork beat the eggs gently incorporating a little flour in from the sides. Add egg yolks and continue to bring in sides incorporating a little flour at a time. Keep scraping up the sides of your mound as it threatens to spill over. Take your time.

Eventually the egg mixture will spill out. Push the flour all over the mixture and combine into a dough ball. Roll, fold and knead this until the dough takes on a silky texture. You will feel it change in your hands. You will have to knead it for at least 5 to 10 minutes to get it to that stage.

Form it into a ball and cover with cling film and rest in the fridge for 2-4 hours. From this stage you can use a rolling pin or pasta machine to roll your pasta.

By hand –

Roll the dough out into a long rectangle and double it over on itself 4 times as you continue to roll it out. Keep you work bench well floured.

For the final product roll it out to the thickness that you want your pasta strands and dust with flour both sides.

Fold it into 8th’s and hand cut slices to form the pasta strands.

By machine –

On the widest setting, pass your pasta through 4 times doubling it over on itself each time before it goes through the rollers.

Reduce your setting and pass it through each setting until you have your required thickness. Remember that the thinest setting is very thin and really for lasagne sheets.

Pass your pasta through the cutter (fettucine or spaghetti) and hang over a clean broom stick to dry for a few hours. I like to dust mine with a little flour to keep the strands separated. You can also freeze it before you dry it so you just pull a bundle from the freezer and drop it into boiling water for 2 mins.

Notes

• The type of flour you use is very important with pasta. Don’t try to make pasta with regular plain flour. You really need specifically pasta flour.
• To get a really lovely silky product you need to use the best ingredients possible so make sure that your eggs are fresh and you use good olive oil.
• Homemade pasta needs the simplest of sauces and a little sprinkle of good parmesan cheese.
• Quick sauce – Dice an onion and fry it in some olive oil with a clove of crushed garlic and a tin of diced tomatoes. Add a handful of fresh basil and cook for 10 minutes. Stir a few spoonfuls through your fresh pasta and enjoy the simple fresh flavours.
• Making your own pasta takes a little time but it will change the way you look at a package of dry pasta forever.
• This is a really fun recipe to make with the kids and they will love rolling it like play dough.
• This recipe was created by Jennifer Cheung for Kidspot, New Zealand’s best recipe finder.

Serving Suggestions

Note