Ever wondered how to make pasta? Celebrity chef Theo Randall shows how to make this Italian classic in a few easy steps, here.
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00:00 Hello my name is Theo Randall and I'm from Theo Randall at the Intercontinental.
00:03 Today I'm going to be showing you how to make fresh pasta.
00:07 Okay so this is my recipe how to make fresh pasta. So I'm going to use whole eggs and egg yolks.
00:14 It's a very rich pasta dough. So first of all we take 350 grams of fine TIPO 00 flour.
00:21 It's the only pasta flour you can use. You cannot use plain flour.
00:25 So you put the flour in the food processor.
00:28 And I've got some fine semolina flour. So about 25 grams just to give a bit of texture and colour.
00:33 And then we're going to do the eggs. So we're going to do two whole eggs.
00:39 And I try and use a very enriched egg yolk.
00:42 Burford Brown's a very good breed of hen for the eggs or these ones which are Cornish eggs.
00:47 It's very important that the quality of the egg is organic or it's of a nice colour.
00:53 So we'll do four of these.
00:56 Now there's lots of recipes where you add salt and olive oil.
00:58 Do not add salt or olive oil to pasta dough because it will make it go black.
01:02 So just a little bit of water if you need anything.
01:05 Okay so we'll just do one more yolk and that will be four yolks and two whole eggs.
01:11 We might need to add another yolk but let's just have a look at this now.
01:14 Okay so we'll put the, turn the food processor on.
01:25 So at this point I'm going to add one teaspoon of water.
01:29 And then we'll just empty the pasta dough into the bowl and it should have this play dough sort of texture, so plasticine.
01:45 And then we'll just work that in and we'll start to push it down onto the bench.
01:52 Just going to fold over the dough and just make sure that you've, all the dough's incorporated together.
01:57 And then we'll add a little bit of semolina flour so it doesn't stick.
02:01 Start kneading the dough just to get a nice smooth paste.
02:05 And the thing about pasta is the more elasticated it is the better it is because then you can roll it much thinner
02:10 and it tastes so much nicer when the pasta's really thin.
02:13 So when you make fresh pasta it's very important to have a damp tea towel because the damp tea towel will stop the pasta from drying
02:18 so you can pop it on the side and not have to keep going backwards and forwards to the fridge.
02:21 So we're just going to cut this piece of pasta dough in half to make it more manageable.
02:24 If you put too much pasta dough through the machine it's just going to break your machine.
02:28 So keep it quite small, the quantity, and then damp tea towel over the top of the pasta and then just leave that on one side.
02:35 And then we'll just start putting this through the machine.
02:37 Now press it nice and thin so it goes through the two rollers.
02:41 If you put it too thick it's just going to break the machine.
02:43 And this process is called proving the pasta.
02:46 And proving the pasta is a little bit like bread, it's basically getting all the gluten working so it becomes nice and tough and elasticated
02:53 so you can really work the pasta so the pasta's got a nice chewy al dente bite to it.
02:58 And then we start putting the pasta through the machine.
03:00 Go slowly, don't go too fast because you want to get that first roll through.
03:06 And then fold over, so each time we're going to fold over.
03:09 You need to do this about five or six times so the pasta becomes really elasticated.
03:14 So we'll keep going through.
03:17 And I find actually using a manual machine is better than an electric one because you can kind of control it so much better.
03:24 As you can see the pasta's really starting to come together and it'll become really, really smooth, almost like silk.
03:30 Because you're squeezing, extruding that pasta through the two rollers and that's just making it really, really stretchy.
03:37 Now if you go to Bologna they always roll the pasta by hand and everything's done with a wooden rolling pin.
03:43 And using a pasta machine is unheard of but at home this is probably the best way to do it.
03:51 So we keep rolling. You can see the pasta's becoming silkier and silkier.
03:56 You can see the colour of it's beautiful from those amazing eggs.
04:00 You can't really over-proof the pasta. Anything that'll happen is it'll become too dry.
04:04 So five or six times should be enough.
04:07 And then that's the sort of consistency you want, a very silky pasta dough that's quite elasticated.
04:15 And then what we're going to do, we're going to start putting it through the machine.
04:17 So notch by notch, one notch down you'll hear a kind of click.
04:21 And then put the pasta dough through the finer setting on the wheels.
04:28 And then do it two times, another notch, down it goes.
04:32 Holding the pasta, stretching it so it doesn't get stuck.
04:35 And the pasta's getting thinner and thinner and also it's becoming really, really silky.
04:39 You can be quite rough with it because you've made it very, very tough.
04:42 You've made it very elasticated rather.
04:44 Now we're getting a bit too long now so anything longer becomes unmanageable.
04:49 So we'll just cut this into the right size but that's kind of what you want.
04:52 Beautiful, silky, golden yellow pasta.
04:56 So we'll just cut this into three.
04:59 One, two, three.
05:03 And then put a little bit of semolina flour on in between each sheet of pasta, just so it doesn't stick.
05:08 And then we're going to pop the tea towel, our damp tea towel on top until we're ready to make our next stage.
05:16 So now we've rolled out the pasta, we can now make whichever pasta we want to do.
05:20 So we can make tagliarini, we can make tagliatelle, we can make pappardelle, we can make ravioli or we can make cappelletti.
05:25 Any one you want.
05:26 But let's start off with the tagliatelle.
05:29 So we get the pasta dough.
05:31 I always say if you can kind of see your hand through the pasta dough, just the sort of silhouette of it, it's the right thickness.
05:38 If it's too thick, it's not very nice when you eat it, it's not very digestible.
05:42 And if it's too thin, it just cooks too quickly so you want to have that sort of nice little bite to it.
05:46 The al dente bite which is to the tooth, it's got texture.
05:49 So we'll cut the pasta to the length we want.
05:51 So this is going to be the length of the tagliatelle.
05:53 And you can just cut this all up beforehand.
05:56 What you do when it's just not too dry but it's just dried a little bit, you then put it through the machine.
06:01 So we take the handle out of the pasta rollers and put it into the cutter.
06:06 This is an attachment you get with all pasta machines.
06:09 And this one is tagliatelle, another one is tagliarini.
06:11 So we'll do both.
06:12 And we put the pasta through and then we start rolling clockwise to pull the pasta through.
06:18 And then you have your tagliatelle.
06:20 And that just goes somewhere flat and dry.
06:23 Don't be tempted to curl it to little curls like you get in the supermarkets.
06:27 It's better to keep it flat because if it's slightly damp, what will happen is the pasta will stick together
06:32 and you'll end up with a blob of pasta which is not very nice.
06:35 Then we'll do the tagliarini.
06:37 So just to the other rollers, put it through.
06:41 Slowly starting off, put the pasta through the cutters and then you get beautiful tagliarini.
06:47 This is not spaghetti, it's tagliarini.
06:49 There's a very big difference.
06:50 Spaghetti is always using dried durum wheat flour and it's always a dry product.
06:55 This is fresh pasta and this one is called tagliarini.
06:57 This is probably the most famous piemonte where they serve it with butter and white truffles which is amazing.
07:04 So the best way to cook tagliarini is by adding tagliarini to the pasta water, salted pasta water,
07:09 and then cook the pasta for about two minutes.
07:11 Not too long because tagliarini is very, very fine so it cooks very, very quickly.
07:16 Then using a pair of tongs, take the pasta out of the water and add it to the sauce
07:21 and move the pasta in the pan together so it emulsifies.
07:25 Make sure you stir the pasta a lot and give it a little toss.
07:32 Then lift up the pasta and it should all be really lovely and juicy.
07:37 Not too wet but juicy.
07:39 That butter and all that pasta water has emulsified so you get this really beautiful thick coated pasta.
07:49 Then we just finish this with some Parmesan cheese.
07:56 Just fine grating the Parmesan cheese and a little bit more black pepper.
08:04 If you're lucky to have a white truffle or any kind of truffle, you can grate that on top.
08:09 [music]