Homemade pasta

About a year ago I bought a pasta machine. About a month ago I bought some special '00' type pasta flour. About a week ago I finally had a go. I was surprised to discover how easy it was. 1 egg at room temp per 100g flour and knead till silky smooth. Then cut into small pieces and feed through the machine.

Start at the thinnest gauge, no.1 and give yourself enough space to pull through, then continue until you have the required thickness. The thicker it gets, the less surface area you have.

We tried all three options on the machine; linguine, tagliatelli and flat, ready for anything, depending on one's level of dexterity.

Gregor liked the tagliatelle.

Then we tried to make ravioli. This version was spinach, garlic, lemon and fennel sausagemeat with a blob of ricotta for good measure.

It was quite easy to get this far, but then to turn that into an appetising (looking as well as tasting) parcel is not quite so simple.

Here's how it turned out. Tasted fine, but the shapes were all over the place, pasta as thick as a brick in some corners and quite anaemic looking. Never mind, the kids were none the wiser.....