World Pasta Day – 25 October 2024
Pasta is one of the world’s most favourite foods! Spaghetti, lasagna, rotini, tortellini – there are over 600 known pasta shapes. It’s delicious, it’s nutritious, it’s versatile. It can be enjoyed as a main course, or as a side dish. Top it with your favourite sauces and enjoy.
Pasta’s origins are ancient. Contrary to popular belief however, Marco Polo did not discover pasta in Asia and bring it to Italy. In fact, in 1279 a.d, a will drafted by Ponzio Bastone was found bequeathing a storage bin of macceroni when Marco Polo was still in the Far East.
Early Romans used a very simple flour and water dough. Pasta is the Italian word for dough. Thomas Jefferson introduced pasta to the Americas after first tasting it in Naples, Italy. He was the American Ambassador to France at the time. In 1789, he brought the first pasta machine, along with crates of macaroni, back to the United States. Pasta became a common North American food in the late 19th century with the surge in Italian immigration.
Check out some of our favourite pasta recipes over on our pinterest board here.
Make your own pasta
Prep time: 1 hr plus resting
Cook time: 2 mins
Serves 4
“When I went on a cooking holiday to Tuscany the first thing we learnt was how to make pasta. Simple ingredients and little bit of love is all you need to make your own perfect pasta dough. For each person use 1 egg to 100g 00 flour. 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”. Emma
Ingredients
- 4 large free-range eggs
- 400 g Tipo 00 flour
Method
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.
Using the tips of your fingers, mix the eggs with the flour, incorporating a little at a time, until everything is combined.
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. 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, you’ll know when to stop – it’s when your pasta starts to feel smooth and silky instead of rough and floury.
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
How to roll your pasta: first of all, if you haven’t got a pasta machine it’s not the end of the world! Just use a rolling pin. When it comes to rolling, the main problem you’ll have is getting the pasta thin enough to work with. It’s quite difficult to get a big lump of dough rolled out in one piece so roll lots of small pieces of pasta rather than a few big ones. You’ll be rolling your pasta into a more circular shape than the long rectangular shapes you’ll get from a machine.
If using a machine to roll your pasta, make sure it’s clamped firmly to a clean work surface before you start
Dust your work surface with some Tipo 00 flour, take a lump of pasta dough the size of a large orange and press it out flat with your fingertips. Set the pasta machine at its widest setting – and roll the lump of pasta dough through it. Lightly dust the pasta with flour if it sticks at all.
Click the machine down a setting and roll the pasta dough through again. Fold the pasta in half, click the pasta machine back up to the widest setting and roll the dough through again. Repeat this process five or six times. It might seem like you’re getting nowhere, but in fact you’re working the dough, and once you’ve folded it and fed it through the rollers a few times, you’ll feel the difference. It’ll be smooth as silk and this means you’re making wicked pasta!
Now it’s time to roll the dough out properly, working it through all the settings on the machine, from the widest down to around the narrowest. Lightly dust both sides of the pasta with a little flour every time you run it through.
When you’ve got down to the narrowest setting, to give yourself a tidy sheet of pasta, fold the pasta in half lengthways, then in half again, then in half again once more until you’ve got a square-ish piece of dough. Turn it 90 degrees and feed it through the machine at the widest setting. As you roll it down through the settings for the last time, you should end up with a lovely rectangular silky sheet of dough with straight sides – just like a real pro! If your dough is a little cracked at the edges, fold it in half just once, click the machine back two settings and feed it through again. That should sort things out.
Whether you’re rolling by hand or by machine you’ll need to know when to stop. If you’re making pasta like tagliatelle, lasagne or stracchi you’ll need to roll the pasta down to between the thickness of a beer mat and a playing card; if you’re making a stuffed pasta like ravioli or tortellini, you’ll need to roll it down slightly thinner or to the point where you can clearly see your hand or lines of newsprint through it.
Once you’ve rolled your pasta the way you want it, you need to shape or cut it straight away. Pasta dries much quicker than you think, so whatever recipe you’re doing, don’t leave it more than a minute or two before cutting or shaping it. You can lay over a damp clean tea towel which will stop it from drying.
If using with a sauce just boil the pasta for a couple of minutes until al dente and mix in with your favourite sauce (taste to check to your taste).
