How to make fresh pasta: Top London chefs from Trullo and Lina Stores give their tips

Pasta, la vista: make it yourself to have the joy of seeing the process through from beginning to end

By now we hope you have completed your DIY homework assignments: mastering sourdough starters, sewing a S/S 2021 wardrobe from scratch, and learning to recite the Ancient Greek alphabet backwards.

There is, however, still room for improvement on your report card: your pasta-making skills are lacking, friend. You’re still making fusilli mistakes. You haven’t quite developed the gnocchi. Don’t worry, we’re no experts either, so we asked a few.

Kneading your flour, olive oil and salt needs patience, says Trullo’s Tim Siadatan, but only five minutes or so of tough love. “If you’re finding it difficult, add a splash of water, and think of it as playdough,” he says, making a pici cacio e pepe with his kids (he even has a helpful Instagram instructional on the @trullo_restaurant account). A rolling pin is your next port of call when the dough is ready “but a clingfilm roll is a useful substitute”.

The pasta masters at Soho’s Lina Stores, who have been delivering DIY pasta-making kits throughout the last two months to those in need (and indeed those who order) have oodles of advice, too. Fillings are chef Masha Rener’s forte. “There are two main types of filling that we have in Italy,” she says. Vegetables such as spinach, courgette and peas with ricotta, breadcrumbs and Parmesan constitute one favourite. The other is with three types of meat — pork, chicken and beef — in a mixture using a third of each. “We tend to save filled fresh egg pasta for special occasions or the weekend,” she adds.

A few tips from Lina Stores: if you are rolling out the pasta by hand, you will need to keep the dough softer, making it easier to use. If you are using a pasta machine, make sure to keep the dough harder — this keeps it from getting too sticky. Leaving the dough to set for at least half an hour is a must,” Rener adds. “Never forget to do it, otherwise you will find rolling out the pasta very tricky.”

A good way of surprising guests is also to add colour to your pasta. This can be done by steaming and puréeing fresh vegetables, such as beetroot, but it can be extremely time-consuming and adds moisture to the pasta dough.

“An easy hack for this is to buy organic powdered vegetables, such as carrot, spinach, beetroot or even raspberry, then add one or two teaspoons to the dough,” Rener says.

Not convinced? Making pasta is “very therapeutic”, Rener says, an activity you can find great joy in, even on your own, “by seeing a process through from beginning to end”.

To fit it into your daily life, “I usually prepare the dough in the morning, wrap it up in clingfilm, then leave it in the fridge during the day, going back to it just before dinner time,” says Rener. Dividing and conquering is crucial — stagger the task across the day, the Italian way. Buon appetito!

The best pasta restaurants in London

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Want fresh pasta without the effort? Check out our guide to fresh pasta delivery services

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