Last month I attended a blogger-only event at Borough Market, my favorite food market in all of London (and possibly the world). This month, Italian food expert Ursula Ferrigno, who is regularly featured on BBC Good Food and is an instructor at my alma mater, Leith’s School of Food and Wine, is the featured chef there. I spent a few hours with Ursula and other bloggers learning how to make fresh pasta and other easy pasta recipes. It. Was. Life. Changing.
I’ve always thought of making pasta from scratch as really intimidating and quite frankly, out of my league. I don’t have an Italian nonna (grandmother). Even though my people invented noodles, the limitless shapes, sizes and kinds of Italian pasta always struck me as a mystery. A tasty, beautiful mystery, but a mystery nonetheless.
As it turns out, Ursula Ferrigno showed us an easy pasta recipe and a method for making pasta by hand, and it couldn’t be more straightforward. The key with making pasta is to make sure your dough is pliable and smooth. It should feel kind of like refrigerated silly putty by the time you’ve finished kneading it. If it’s sticky, pillowy, or cracks easily — well, I hate to say it, but you’re not going to make good pasta.
The best part of this method is that you don’t need a machine, even though I do own this classic, affordable Atlas machine. I bought a pasta machine with the idea that I’d be making pasta all the time after I finished my stint in culinary school, but the truth of the matter is, the machine is kind of intimidating to me. There’s the gears, the folding, and the issue of where to dry the pasta. When you hand roll and cut your pasta, it dries during the process, so all you have to do with the pasta at the end is dust it with more semolina flour.
The noodles that this easy pasta recipe produces is gorgeous — just the right amount of bite, with a heavenly mix of doughiness. I love that I can make enough pasta for appetizers for my whole family using this recipe. I mean, I could easily double it and make enough for dinner-sized portions, but really, I don’t want to spoil my family into thinking that they can come home after a long day and sit down to a meal of fresh pasta like, every night.
It’s called managing expectations, right?
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I’m Ann, a mom / wife / lawyer / certified culinary enthusiast. I share recipes, travel guides and home life tips while living overseas. Currently based in São Paulo, Brazil.
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Wow! Thanks for this information. I never tried to make pasta without a machine but after reading your I am gonna try it for sure. Very nice post I like the way of expressing the information here. Generally I ordered pasta from http://belottirb.com/ they also make pasta so tasty that you will love it. But your post is also amazing love reading blogs like this.
I’ve made pasta with the recipe a few times now, and every time it works perfectly! Using high quality eggs means the yolks are very yellow and make the pasta a warm yellow colour as well, and I am always so pleased with the results! Keep in mind, the pasta does need to be used pretty much immediately after being cut, unless you can hang the strands so they don’t all stick to each other. I put my cut pasta in a bowl and even after 30 minutes they’d all stuck together into a big lump…
Glad this recipe has worked out for you! It’s one of my favorites.
Hi, when you say in step 5 to “do it again” do you mean just fold it in one more time or repeat the whole step …. as in roll it out till thin then fold again?
I’m looking forward to making this tonight with pesto.
Hi Esther, just fold it again. Good luck!
Amazing recipe! I really love making pasta at home
Great!
So, I tried this recipe and ended up with what I’d call really long dumplings. The pasta never got thin enough, even after 10 minutes of rolling it out. I wasn’t sure how thin it was supposed to be, so eventually I stopped. My only note would be that you should really, really, really make sure to roll this out very thinly (<.5mm) or the pasta ends up as essentially strips of dough.