Fresh egg pasta

Simple ingredients and a little bit of love are all you need to make your own perfect pasta dough.

Prep time: 40 mins plus resting
Serves: 6

Ingredients

• 600g Tipo 00 flour
• 6 large free-range eggs

Instructions

1. Place the flour on a board or in a bowl. Make a well in the centre and crack the eggs into it. Beat the eggs with a fork until smooth.
2. Using the tips of your fingers, mix the eggs with the flour, incorporating a little at a time, until everything is combined.
3. Knead the pieces of dough together – with a bit of work and some love and attention they’ll all bind together to give you one big, smooth lump of dough! Once you’ve made your dough you need to knead and work it with your hands to develop the gluten in the flour, otherwise your pasta will be flabby and soft when you cook it, instead of springy and al dente.
4. There’s no secret to kneading. You just have to bash the dough about a bit with your hands, squashing it into the table, reshaping it, pulling it, stretching it, squashing it again. It’s quite hard work, and after a few minutes it’s easy to see why the average Italian grandmother has arms like Frank Bruno! You’ll know when to stop – it’s when your pasta starts to feel smooth and silky instead of rough and floury.
5. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and put it in the fridge to rest for at least 30 minutes – make sure the clingfilm covers it well or it will dry out and go crusty round the edges (this will give you crusty lumps through your pasta when you roll it out, and nobody likes crusty lumps!).

You can also make your dough in a food processor if you’ve got one. Just bung everything in, whiz until the flour looks like breadcrumbs, then tip the mixture on to your work surface and bring the dough together into one lump, using your hands.

Cooking the pasta

1. Divide the dough into four equal pieces and place one piece on a work surface dusted with semolina. Make sure the other dough pieces are covered with a damp tea towel to prevent them from drying out. Roll the dough into a rectangle that is about 5mm thick.
2. Feed the pasta through a pasta machine on the widest setting. Fold and feed through again. Repeat the process four or five times.
3. Pass the dough through the pasta machine rollers, decreasing the setting grade by grade to the desired setting (either the penultimate or final setting, depending on your preference). If the sheet of pasta becomes too long to handle easily, cut it in half. Ideally, by the end you should be able to see your fingers through the pasta. (You can roll pasta by hand with a rolling pin, but it will certainly give you a workout!).
4. Cut the pasta dough into your desired shape using a pizza wheel or pasta roller and a ruler. Alternatively, dust each sheet with semolina and fold in both ends to the centre of the sheet, repeating until you have a small paperback-sized parcel.
5. Use a sharp chef’s knife to cut it into strips. Immediately unfold and untangle the sheets and swish in more semolina while you cut the rest. Or simply feed the pasta sheets through one of the cutting attachments on the machine.
6. To cook, fill a large pot with boiling water (it will take a couple of kettle’s worth), add salt and bring to the boil.
7. Add the pasta and cook for around 2 minutes, or until it floats to the surface. Drain thoroughly (reserving a mug of pasta water in case your sauce needs a little loosening) and serve with your sauce of choice.

Seasoning

• 1 tsp salt, or more if you prefer, in the cooking water2
• Sauce, oil or butter of your choice over the cooked, drained pasta2
• Finely grated hard cheese, such as parmesan or pecorino, to finish2