Pasta pasta pasta

I’m the proud new owner of a pasta rolling machine. A long overdue purchase. Until now I’d often felt a bit embarrassed that I’d never actually made my own pasta. For someone that’s supposed to be into food it should probably be a task mastered by now. I do like pasta and eat plenty of it but usually the dried stuff which for spaghetti, tagliatelle and shapes is fine but you can’t have filled pasta like ravioli or tortellini unless you make your own.  And I'm a big fan of anything filled - pasties, pies, dumplings, etc. There's just something about food that's prepared as a parcel and where you eat the whole lot, wrapping paper and all. So I’d always known that when I did get round to buying a pasta roller it would be ravioli that would be on the menu.

I couldn’t make up my mind as to what filling to make first so I ended up making two different raviolis and a tagliatelle all in one go. A mushroom and ricotta ravioli finished with a light mushroom cream and a drizzle of truffle oil, a butternut squash and amaretti ravioli in a sage and thyme butter and a tagliatelle in a tomato sauce.

I made the pasta by hand after reading everything Giorgio Locatelli had to say on the matter (which is a lot) in his excellent book – Made in Italy Food and Stories. There's no firm rules on the proportion of egg to flour, I used 3 eggs and 4 yolks and a pinch of salt to 500g of 00 drum wheat flour, mixed well and needed for 10 mins. I still found the mix a little dry and had to wet my hands just to bring it together. After a good rest in the fridge it’s ready for rolling. Rolling takes longer than you’d think. Notching down the width of the rollers on each run through then folding the pasta back on itself and repeating, then turning the dough and putting it through width ways, again reducing the space on each pass through the machine. It ends up being beautifully silky to handle and surprisingly manageable despite its thinness.

Preparing the ravioli turned out to be one of those very satisfying jobs. Laying out a sheet of pasta, dotting it with blobs of filling and then covering with another fresh sheet, and softly fingering round the lumps to ease out any air bubbles. Its rather as if you’re tucking these little tasty morsels into a comfy bed of soft clean sheets.    

Having made the ravioli I couldn’t resist having a go at using the impressive looking tagliatelle attachment for the machine. Turning the handle and watching the long sheet being shredded into tagliatelle is another satisfying and slightly hypnotic sight. There’s a little bit of practice involved in making sure the strands don’t clump together but otherwise it’s a beautifully simple task.

Being my first attempt this all seemed to take a little while. Between making the fillings and sauces and rolling and shaping the pasta I wasn’t ready to start serving this triple course pasta dinner till after 10pm – although in retrospect this seems a very Italian like time to sit down to eat. 

Turkish eggs

Poached eggs, toast and spinach served with a spiced butter and plain yoghurt.

A great alternative to the usual breakfast combinations. Could even be classed as vaguely healthy were it not for the thick slice of butter. Add a dusting of nutmeg and a drip of lemon over the spinach and try not to overdo the eggs. For the butter -  add chilli and a pinch of saffron to softened butter, mix and season, roll in cling film, form into a log and chill.

You can get a good version of these in Bibi's if you just cant be bothered to cook it yourself.

French toast, but no ordinary French toast.

Thick slices of brioche soaked in hot sweetened milk flavoured with vanilla before being dipped in beaten egg and fried in butter till crisp. Finished off with a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar. You have to be careful not to let these break up as you transfer them across from the milk to the egg and to the pan. Once cooked the outer egg coating keeps them together. They are delightfully soft and gooey on the inside, rather like a good bread pudding. A mile away from the thin slice of industrial white bread, barely glanced in egg and fried till dry that I had served up to me as French toast in a certain Ranelagh cafe recently.

One slice each of this is enough for breakfast served along side some plain toased brioche and some blood oranges to even the score.