Making your own pasta really is easy.  Whether you do it by hand or in a stand mixer, anyone can do it.  Check my beetroot pasta recipe here for the story of the friend who taught me to make pasta, or follow his basic recipe below, adding a little lemon and squid ink for this pasta de mer.

• Mound 300g of pasta flour on your counter top (or in the bowl of your kitchenaid).
• Add the finely grated zest of one organic lemon (optional)
• Make a well in the centre and add 3 lightly beaten large freerange eggs
• Add a sachet of squid ink (or up to two if you want your pasta very dark, but you may need to add a little more flour to your dough).
• Mix into a dough and knead until smooth and elastic (use the flat beater until the dough comes together then switch to the dough hook if you are using a kitchenaid).
• Cut into quarters and leave 3 quarters under a damp cloth whilst you work with the other quarter.
• Flatten out the quarter and run it through your pasta rollers on the lowest (1) setting several times (folding it over in 3 like a letter each time)
• When the dough starts to feel lovely and supple, switch the rollers to the next setting and run through twice.
• Keep going making the settings progressively thinner until you have fairly thin sheet of pasta.
• I usually go to setting 6, or 8 if I am making ravioli
• Now you can cut the pasta into smaller sheets to use for cannelloni, or lasagne
• Or run it through your pasta cutters.  I used the linguine setting for fine noodles.
• Fresh pasta only takes about 3 minutes to cook in boiling water.
• Store in sheets sprinkled with semolina, then wrapped and frozen.  Or do the same with nests of noodles.
• Make sure you brush all the semolina off before cooking.
  

Tags: homemade pasta, pasta, squid ink

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