Homemade pasta

No I'm not completely mad!! Making fresh pasta is admittedly time consuming so I only make it for lasagna and usually manage to rope in one or more of the children to help. On this occasion they all wanted to join in and we had far too much fun with the pasta machine seeing how long we could manage to get a strip of pasta without dropping it, squashing it or tangling ourselves up in it!!

Basically the recipe is 100g plain flour to every egg, I usually do about 200g for a lasagna and often throw in an extra egg yolk for good measure. You can use other types of flour, I used to go for 00 mixed with semolina flour, and you can colour the pasta with spinach, tomato paste, sundried tomatoes or even squid ink.

Pasta machines seem to range somewhat in price, don't pay more than £15 for one - Morrisons currently have them for that price and mine came from Argos some years ago. The dryer is optional but really useful and as it folds away its not a problem for storage like so many other "useful" gadgets!