It’s that time of the month where I tantalise your taste buds and take you on a journey through the delicacies of Italian cuisine.

After a lot of positive feedback from you guys and a lot of requests the time has come to teach you how to make your own pasta.

This recipe is for the culinary adventurous amongst you or for people that have a free afternoon and fancy making a mess in the kitchen, the results are worth it believe me.

First, a little history; there are many theories of where pasta came from, some believe it came from China, others from the Arabs.

What I do know is that it became very popular in Italian cuisine during the Roman Empire. During the Romans they had an abundance of wheat, so they made large pasta sheets, like our lasagne today, which they dried and stored away to eat in times of hardship.

As their lands grew so did the influence of pasta, which provides me with a job today.

Fun fact – Italians prefer dried pasta over fresh pasta, we like to eat it al-dente, which a lot of you call ‘under cooked’.

Making pasta is easy, messy and time consuming, but easy nonetheless.

If you have one of those pasta machines which look like two rolling pins and a handle then it’s a lot easier, if you don’t then be prepared to give your arm muscles a workout.

Here is the recipe:

For the ingredients you need 600g of ‘00’ flour, six eggs and some extra virgin olive oil.

Clean a large work surface, like the kitchen worktop or a table, and empty the flour into the middle of the surface.

In the middle of the flour crack and add five eggs. With the last egg we need to add just the yolk separating the egg white for use later on in the recipe.

Add a pinch of salt and pepper and one tablespoon of olive oil, then use your hands to fold in the flour and mix together.

Continue to knead the flour until it turns into a firm and elastic dough – if it is still a little sticky add some extra flour.

Now you need to flatten the dough with a pasta machine or with a rolling pin. The aim is to roll the dough into large rectangular shapes about 2mm thick.

When the dough is rolled you need to cut out your ravioli squares with either a pasta cutter or a knife, they need to be around 10cm on each side.

Now we are going to make the ravioli.

With each square piece of pasta, add filling to the centre of the square. We are making giant ravioli so you can be generous but don’t over fill them as they will come apart when cooking

With a pastry brush moisten the edges of the pasta square with the remaining egg white, fold over the pasta squares in half and press down firmly at the edges.

With a pasta cutter or knife cut off the edges to make a nice rectangular shaped ravioli. The actual name for this type of ravioli is agnolotti.

Once you have made all your pasta parcels place them in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.