Fresh Pas­ta

800 grams Type 00 (or pas­ta) flour
8 large free range eggs

Place the flour in a heap on a work sur­face and make a well in the cen­ter. Pour the eggs into the well (catch them when they run away!) and mix well until you have a ball of real­ly stiff dough, then knead it real­ly well. You want to end up with a nice silky, glossy, smooth ball of dough, quite firm. Be patient and scrape your hands off now and then and don’t wor­ry if you can’t incor­po­rate every scrap of flour. You will need to knead at least 10 min­utes. When fin­ished, wrap in cling­film and chill for at least half an hour in the fridge.

After the rest­ing peri­od, pinch off a piece about the size of three fin­gers, and feed it through your pas­ta machine first in the widest set­ting. Then fold it in half and con­tin­ue at the widest set­ting sev­er­al times, and then con­tin­u­ing through to the finest set­ting. Lay the pas­ta out on a floured sur­face and place an egg-yolk-sized spoon­ful of the fill­ing of your choice about 2 inch­es apart, then brush with egg white around the fill­ing to make the top lay­er of pas­ta stick. Then play anoth­er lay­er on the top and press all around the mound of fill­ing. Cut around the fill­ing leav­ing an inch or so of pas­ta all around. Drop into boil­ing water for no more than three min­utes and drain well.