Pasta making

Pasta making is really fulfilling and easy.

The kids love helping in-between the Kindle and Lego, and even though it may not be not cheaper to do, homemade pasta has loads better flavour and texture and making it has to be much better than watching inane television.

I had been reading up on spelt wheat already and picked up some spelt flour from my friend Matt the baker from Bread Ahead at Borough Market.

The flour itself looks a little off white, not speckled like whole meal flour just off white, and otherwise it's pretty much like any other flour you see.

Place the flour on your work top and make it into a volcano crater so the lightly whisked eggs can be put into the middle and gently mixed in. Strange analogy ahead - it feels like when you were a kid helping your Dad mix up some cement while not letting the water escape.

Once the spelt flour, eggs and a pinch of salt were mixed well together then out came the pasta machine - well it’s just two adjustable metal rollers, but has to be said, is a lovely piece of Italian engineering style and functionality as only the Italians can do.

The kids turned the handle whilst I was working the pasta mix by progressively rolling and folding the dough thinner and thinner, then resting it under a tea towel.

After this, I used the cutting aspect of the pasta machine to give us tagliatelle. Last bit of the process is to blanch or to fully boil the pasta, after which you can either eat it, put it in the fridge, or even bag and freeze it.

There are lots of funky things that you can add to pasta like squid ink for black pasta, coco powder for brown, pesto for green, beetroot for red or natural food dyes for all the other colours. My overriding memory of spelt pasta is that it just tastes loads better, and this of course is the very best reason for making your own pasta.

Kids eat meat based pasta.

It has been reported that kids think among other peculiar things that pasta is made from meat, and tomatoes are grown underground like potatoes. 

This sounds unbelievable but in fact, this demonstrates how far we have become disconnected from the farmer and his products. 

It's admittedly a big job to start the reversal after decades of disassociating food and food products from the farm, and to begin countering the food industries relentless homogenisation and sterilisation of food. As we try to regain the respect and veneration for food and its producers, where do we start?

Back to the KIDS! I'm guessing it will take us one or two generations to gain momentum.......

I said to a music journalist when he said we'll never change it - "well its a bucket of water if we all put one or two drops in eventually it gets filled". 

A consolation with all this work we need to do in changing our food culture, is that it's great fun enthusing young people about food. Try it. ;-)