Fresh Egg Pasta

There is nothing like fresh, silky ribbons of home made pasta. Besides being quite a therapeutic activity, one of the best things about fresh pasta is you can store it in the freezer and it tastes just as good as the day you made it, straight from the freezer into a boiling pot of salted water! Look out for our simple pesto recipe coming soon – an ideal way to use your pasta!

This recipe makes enough for around four people.

Ingredients:

3 cups of ’00 grade pasta flour
3 large eggs
6 egg yolks
2 teaspoons of salt
Pasta machine, preferably with tagliatelle blade

Method:

1. Put the flour and salt in a large bowl and make a well in the middle.
2. Whisk the eggs and egg yolks together and tip into the well.
3. Use a fork to vigorously incorporate the egg into the flour (I like to shake the bowl with one hand and the fork with the other, rather than just mixing a still bowl with a fork).
4. Test with your hands if the dough starts to come together. If it is looking very dry, add another egg yolk. Form a dough ball and turn out onto a lightly floured work surface.
5. Knead the dough for around 5 minutes, it should become smoother, but don’t worry if it isn’t very smooth, this will happen when it rests in the fridge.
6. Rest for at least half hour in the fridge.
7. After half hour, take dough out, cut into four pieces, cover three with a damp towel and flatten out the fourth piece into a rectangle with your hands. It should be around the size of an iPhone but thicker. This isn’t exact, you are only doing this so it goes through relatively easily in the first round in the pasta maker.
8. Flour the dough and put through the widest setting in your pasta machine – then fold and repeat twice.
9. Now put the pasta through each setting twice (no need to fold), getting thinner each time. I stop at setting 6 on a kitchen aid pasta attachment – which is two from the thinnest setting of 8.
10. Now you have your thickness sorted, you need to change to the tagliatelle blade and cut. The pasta sheets are pretty long by this stage, so if you haven’t already cut them to be more manageable, cut into 2 or 3 parts (or however long you want your pasta to be) and heavily rub both sides with flour to prevent sticking when drying.
11. I use a pasta drying rack to dry the pasta (you can use a wooden chair, or a broom handle) for around 20 minutes, before putting into small bunches as per the image. At this point, you can leave them as they are for an hour or two before cooking, or transfer onto a tray and place in the freezer for 30 minutes to “set” then transfer to a plastic bag and store in the freezer.
12. The pasta takes around 3-4 minutes to cook, and 4-6 minutes from the freezer.