Homemade Pasta Inspired By Isaac Carew

Tip the flour onto a clean work surface and make the well in the centre.

Crack in the eggs and whisk them with a fork, slowly incorporating the flour until you have mixed it all. Then use your hands to bring it all together into a ball of dough.

Knead it for about 10 minutes until its really soft to the touch. This is important for developing the gluten - if you don’t work it enough - your pasta will be what can only be described as “flabby”. So make sure you work it!

Once you’ve kneaded it and it’s feeling really soft, wrap it in cling film and leave to chill in the fridge for 30 mins.

Then take it out of the fridge and divide into two. It dried out really quickly so keep any dough covered under a damp tea towel until you need it. If you’ve got a pasta machine, make sure it’s clamped to the work top, add some flour to your dough to stop it from sticking and then squish the dough with your fingers to make it flat. Put it through the pasta machine on the thickest setting. Click the machine down a setting and then run the dough through it again. Work your way through all the settings on the machine right down to the narrowest ones. Lightly dust the dough with flour each time to stop it from sticking.

For spaghetti or tagliatelle you want it to be about the thickness of the second narrowest settings but for ravioli you want the narrowest as remember there will be two layers of pasta so you want them both to be very thin. Handle with care.

Cut and shape the pasta straight after you’ve rolled it. Pasta dries out very quickly so don’t hang around and keep it under a damp tea towel until you are ready to cook it.

Cook in boiling salted water for just a few minutes. It will float to the top when it’s done. Completely delicious.