COOKING IN: Fresh pasta is fun to make - at least once - so long as you have a machine, writes Hugo Arnold
Making pasta is not difficult, but your first few attempts can be nerve-wracking. Fresh pasta needs space and many hands. Clean surfaces will soon be covered with semolina flour and drying pasta. But when you are done, and you look at trays of misshapen ravioli, their insides bursting with herb-spiked ricotta, glistening crabmeat or, perhaps, some offcuts of fish, you will get a real sense of achievement. I've always been at a loss to understand the fine-dining restaurant habit of taking the likes of lobster and stuffing it into ravioli. It seems too much of a conceit, not to mention a disservice to the lobster, a grand beast best enjoyed with little more than a bowl of mayonnaise and perhaps some crisp French fries.
Ravioli was invented, as far as I can make out, as an ingenious form of packaging - frugal Italians' ingenious way of taking something unattractive and making it look delicious. Ricotta's granular texture makes it a poor dressing for long strands of dough, but combined with other ingredients, such as a stuffing, its silkiness comes into its own.
Ravioli, or its cousins, can be dressed with anything from sage butter to tomato sauce, from infused olive oil to something spiked with chilli or the more robust herbs, such as rosemary. Try dressing just-made tagliatelle with a sauce of roughly chopped cherry tomatoes and basil or a sauce of lightly poached skate, infused with capers and a hint of anchovy.
If a few hours stuffing pasta seems rather a lot to undertake for a lunch, bear in mind that once the filling is in place there is very little else to be done. You can clean down, pour yourself a glass of wine and relax.
MAKING FRESH PASTA
You can make pasta by hand, using a rolling pin. It is extremely tough work, though, and the results tend to be rustic, to say the least. Pasta machines, which are not too expensive, are sold by all good kitchen shops.
Fresh pasta is made using flour and eggs. Seasoning and flavouring come from the water it is cooked in and the sauce it is combined with, so there is no salt, no oil and no other flavouring, although you can add spinach, making it green, or tomato, making it red.
You cannot be exact about quantities - the flour, eggs and even the weather determine the differences - but, as a rule, 200 grams of flour requires three medium eggs. If possible, you should use type 00 Italian pasta flour (good delis stock it). This produces a delicate, rich and simple dough. I usually incorporate some semolina, which makes the dough easier to handle.
You can also dry it. If you are drying long pasta you need a broom handle and lots of space. Hang the pasta over the horizontal handle and leave it until the surface takes on a leathery look. You can then fold strands or stack larger pieces, such as lasagne, using semolina to stop it sticking. Once dry, it will keep indefinitely.
PASTA DOUGH
250g type 00 flour
250g semola duro (hard fine semolina)
300g pasteurised eggs (roughly six medium-sized)
Combine all the ingredients in a mixer. Run the motor at low speed until the dough forms a ball and begins to come away from the sides of the bowl. If it is too wet, add a little more flour; if it is too dry, add a few drops of cold water. Turn the dough on to a floured surface and knead it by pulling and pushing with the ball of your hand, stretching it away from you, then pulling it back. Turn through a quarter-circle and repeat. Do this 100 times, or as near to that as you can. You should have an elastic ball of dough. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for an hour, or up to four, but no longer, or the dough will oxidise and develop small black spots.
Divide the dough into four balls. Assemble the pasta machine and dust the work surface with 00 flour and the container to hold the pasta with semolina. Flatten the first disc of pasta, open the pasta machine to its widest setting and feed the disc through the rollers. Fold in two, lengthways. Narrow the rollers by one click and repeat the process. Keep doing this until you reach the narrowest setting on the machine. By this time the pasta may be unmanageably long, in which case cut it and work with shorter lengths. The pasta should be thin enough for you to be able to see an outline of something underneath it.
You now have an oblong of pasta that you can cut, stuff or shape according to the recipe. When this is done, put it in the container with the semolina and dust with more semolina, as fresh pasta sticks to itself.
STUFFING RAVIOLI
Roll the pasta out so you have a sheet about 10 centimetres wide. Dot the stuffing at five-centimetre intervals along half of the sheet, then fold over the dough, so you have a tube containing the dotted stuffing. Cut into squares, using a pastry cutter or sharp knife, sealing the edges as you go. The secrets are not to overstuff and to ensure that the stuffing contains no air.
PARSLEY AND RICOTTA STUFFING
8 tbsp chopped parsley
300g fresh ricotta
115g Parmesan
1 egg yolk
whole nutmeg
Combine the parsley, ricotta, Parmesan, yolk, teaspoon of salt and quarter-teaspoon of grated nutmeg in a bowl and mash with a fork. Taste and adjust seasoning.
SWEET POTATO STUFFING
800g sweet potato or butternut squash
two amaretti biscuits
1 egg yolk
3 tbsp chopped prosciutto
170g Parmesan
3 tbsp chopped parsley
whole nutmeg
Prick the sweet potatoes with a fork (or peel and roughly chop the butternut squash) and bake in a preheated oven, at 200 degrees/gas 6, for an hour, or until soft. Cut the chunks in half and return to the turned-off oven for a further 10 minutes, to dry out.
Blitz the biscuits in a food processor, then add the potato flesh. Turn the mixture into a bowl and mash with a fork, along with the yolk, prosciutto, Parmesan, parsley, quarter-teaspoon of grated nutmeg and teaspoon of salt. Combine, taste and adjust seasoning.
SPINACH AND RICOTTA STUFFING
250g fresh spinach, washed and stems removed
225g ricotta
1 egg, beaten
75g Parmesan
whole nutmeg
Cook the spinach in a covered saucepan over a low heat until it wilts. Allow it to cool and squeeze out any excess moisture. Chop finely and mix with the ricotta, egg, Parmesan, salt and pepper and a quarter of the nutmeg, grated. Taste and adjust accordingly.