Hello my loves,

I’ve been a little under the weather for the past couple of days - nothing sinister, just a good old-fashioned stomach upset - and do you know what my body’s been craving? Pasta. Pasta pasta pasta pasta pasta. All the pasta, all the time. Fortunately pasta is really quite simple to whip up at home, and you do NOT need a pasta machine to do it. I actually have an intense dislike of pasta machines. Firstly becauseI’m a hands-on girl at heart, and I just think that if every Italian grandma for the last 500 years has managed without a pasta machine, I probably can too. And secondly, because I am extremely inept at using them. I do have one, but every time I go near it I end up with a torn mess of useless dough, and a thousand pieces of fiddly, clogged-up metal to clean. I just don’t find it fun. So, I’ve reverted to the other machine you can use to make pasta: the rolling pin. It’s all you need, along with flour, eggs, a sprinkle of salt, and a little water, to make gorgeous slippery ribbons of the good stuff right on your own bench top.

I’ve been tinkering with several different pasta doughs over the last few months, and there’s two that have emerged the stars: a simple egg-and-flour one, perfect for rolling and cutting into any pasta of the ribbon variety (tagliatelle, fettucine, pappardelle etc), and an even simpler one that’s just semolina flour and water. This second dough works wonderfully for rustic, shaped pastas like pici and malloredus, which I usually find gloriously fun, but to be frank, the energy for shaping has eluded me this week. So today we’ll focus on the egg-and-flour dough, which works on a very simple ratio: one egg for every 100g of flour, with a little water to loosen the dough if needed. You can scale this up to make as much pasta as you need - I like to make a double batch and freeze half of the dough after kneading and resting it, squirrelled away for an evening when a pasta craving strikes without warning.

You won’t find this recipe on my website, principally because I do feel pretty lousy today, and so I’m just doing what I really need to before signing off and heading under my duvet. It wouldn’t be a Friday without a note to you, but uploading recipes to my website? That can definitely wait for another day. So, grab the flour and roll up your sleeves my darlings, and let's make some pasta!!!

Homemade fresh pasta

Serves 4

300g plain flour

3 pasture-raised eggs

1 teaspoon salt

A little water to loosen, if required

Pasta-making process at a glance:
1. Make dough and knead (15 mins)
2. Rest dough (1 to 8 hours, or overnight, depending on how much time you have)
3. Roll pasta and cook (15-20 mins)

Place the flour in a bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the eggs and salt to the well, then use your fingers and hands to combine everything into a shaggy dough. Just scrunch and squelch away until it all comes together. It won’t be a super wet dough, but if it’s really dry and crumbly you can add a tablespoon or two (15-30ml) of water at a time, until the dough comes together. It should be wet enough to form a cohesive ball, but not so wet that you can’t knead it easily on a bench top.

Knead the dough for 7-10 minutes, until it becomes smooth and elastic. It will become a lot silkier once you rest it, so don’t be too worried about the texture, but do commit yourself to at least seven minutes of lovely cathartic kneading. It’s important for the dough. You can lightly flour the bench if you need to, but remember that you don’t want too much more flour to be absorbed into the dough, so use a light hand for this.

Place your kneaded ball of dough in a clean bowl - you can dust the bottom in a little flour to prevent sticking. Give the top a light flour dusting too, then cover the bowl with a plate and set aside to rest at rom temperature for anywhere between 1-8 hours, or even overnight. It should rest for a minimum of an hour. I just make mine at the point in the day when it becomes obvious to me that I will need to eat pasta. Yesterday I made it at 3pm, and it rested until 6pm. As I'm very fond of saying, it's not an exact science, so just work with your own timeline, as long as it incorporates a resting time of at least one hour.

Now, we're ready to roll. If you've made the above quantity of pasta, divide your rested dough into two (noting its silky texture with glee). If you've made a larger quantity, you may want to divide it into three or four for easier rolling. Lightly flour your bench, then start to roll your pasta. Just roll, roll, roll, into a wonky square or rectangle, until it's lovely and thin. It may tear a little - no matter. This is rustic, home-style pasta. Each strand will be slightly different, and that's the joy of it. Your pasta sheet should end up roughly the thickness of a piece of sturdy paper, but you can use your own judgement as to how far you want to roll it. Like I said, this is rustic :).

Dust your rolled out sheet with flour, then pick it up from one end, using a table knife to prise it off the bench if it sticks. Lower the pasta back down on itself, folding back and forth like an accordion or ribbon, until you have a wide strip made of three or four loose layers of dough. Cut this strip crossways (i.e across the folds) into smaller strips that are as skinny or wide as you like (remembering that the pasta will expand further as it cooks). Pick up your cut strips and shake them gently through your fingers to loosen into pasta ribbons, then place on a floured tray. You can toss a little extra flour through the ribbons at this point if you like. Don't worry if the strips stick a little, just give them a stir with a fork when you drop them into the cooking water and they should un-stick themselves.

Cook your pasta in plenty of boiling salted water until it's done to your liking (taste it to check), or freeze for later use. If you freeze it once it's cut, cook it straight from frozen. You can also freeze the rested dough, but this you would defrost before rolling, cutting and cooking. Serve with your favourite sauce.

And so my loves, I will leave you to your weekend, as I step gingerly into mine. This one I'll take as it comes, starting with not much at all other than stints with my book interspersed with snoozes, and we'll see what happens from there. Until next week my loves 💛.

Love, Rachel xxx

PS I'll likely release some new intimate dinner dates very soon. June has been filled with some lovely private events (including Hearth & Soul's first wedding next week!!), so I've just been letting it ride, but you will of course be the first to know once new public sittings are released. I have to say, the braised lamb we're serving is probably one of the best things I've ever cooked, so stay tuned for your next chance to take a nibble 💜.