Fresh Pasta Tortellini Recipe

Hello :)! 

I made pasta! From scratch. I always thought it would be hard to make, but it actually is pretty easy. 

I decided to make tortellini, which is a stuffed pasta. I didn't make the filling from scratch, I bought Tesco's finest Italian meatballs and "mushed" them up. 

The key to good pasta is using a fine flour, such as type 00. You can buy this in Tesco's, I used the brand McDougalls. I also used duck eggs, which are much richer than ordinary chicken eggs. 

Ingredients

170g Type 00 plain flour 

3 large eggs

Method

1. Sift the flour into a bowl, make a well in the middle and crack open 2 eggs into the well.

2. Mix in the flour with the 2 eggs using a fork until all combined.

3. Tip out the combined mixture onto a floured work surface 

4. Spend about 15 minutes on this part! Use your hands and gather all of the mixture together, forming a ball, then kneed, stretch, pull, whack, as if your life depended on it!

Kneeding is the one of the key parts to making pasta, it releases the gluten-y goodness!

The dough should not be dry. It should be smooth and elastic, and also not leave any stickyness on your hands. 

5. Wrap the dough ball in cling film, make sure you cover the whole ball, as it drys very easily, and leave for 30 minutes. 

6. Meanwhile, make your filling! You can put anything you want in tortellini, the most popular is spinach and ricotta, but I opted for a meat filling. I used Tesco's Finest Italian meatballs!

7. If using mince, cook it off, add your flavourings etc, then pop it into a processor. Crack the last egg into the processor and blitz. 

8. After 30 mins, remove the dough from the cling film and cut into quarters. You want to work with small sections of dough at a time. Remember, the dough dries out quick, so place the dough under a damp tea towel if not using straight away! 

9. Roll the section of dough using a rolling pin. make sure you make it really thin, about 1-2mm in thickness. It will take some time, but keep working it at it. Or put it through a pasta maker...I didn't have one. 

10. Using a round cutter, cut out circles of dough. 

11. Place your filling into the centre of the circle. Make sure you don't use too much filling, I found less than a tsp worked well. 

12. Fold over the circle into a semi circle 

12. Seal the sides together. You can use a fork if you wish, but it looks like tortellini if you "smoosh" the sides together with your fingers. 

12. Bring the two corners together to form a tortellini shape.

13. Place each tortellini onto a plate, make sure they aren't touching and cover with a damp tea towel until you've finished making the others. 

14. Boil the tortellini for around 12-15 minutes 

15. Then serve with your favourite sauce! 

This was a very simple dish to make. Although it does take a long time to make! 45 minutes to make the dough and let it rest. Then another 45 minutes to make the tortellini and cook it! 

I hope you enjoy making your own pasta. I want to make something like tagliatelli next! Without a pasta maker/cutter...eek!

'Till next time,