Why we still make our pasta by hand

The morning table

Two cooks begin at six with eggs, flour and nothing else. By eleven there are tagliatelle, ravioli and rigatoni for the day, and none is kept overnight.

Machines would be quicker. But hand-rolled dough has a rougher surface, and sauce clings to it in a way you can taste.

The pasta table is the quietest corner of the kitchen. By seven the radio is off and the two cooks work in a rhythm that has not changed in years: weigh, knead, rest, roll, fold, cut. A visitor might think nothing is happening, but a great deal is.

It is a slow way to run a kitchen, and we would not change it.

Flour, eggs, patience

The dough is eighty per cent flour and twenty per cent yolk, with a little water only on damp days. It is kneaded until it feels like a cool earlobe, then rested under a cloth.

From there it is rolled into thin sheets with a long pin, folded, cut and shaken out. A good cook does not measure this. They feel it.

The sheet, rolled thin enough to read through.

Shapes are chosen for their texture as much as their look. Tagliatelle has the surface area to hold a slow ragù, rigatoni catches a sharp tomato sauce in its ridges, and a filled ravioli keeps its centre warm and soft. Each decision is made with the finished plate in mind.

Tagliatelle for the ragù, rigatoni for the amatriciana, and a filled ravioli that changes weekly. Each shape is chosen for the sauce it will carry.

Rigatoni, cut and drying.

Ravioli, filled by hand.

Cooking it takes as much attention as making it. The pasta is boiled in a large pot of well-salted water, lifted out a minute early and finished in the sauce with a ladle of its own cooking liquid. That last step is what gives the dish its silky coat.

A sauce is built to sit on the pasta, not drown it. We use a small ladle and finish in the pan, so the starch from the pasta thickens it naturally.

We are often asked whether anyone really notices the difference. We think they do, even if they cannot say why. The plate feels lighter, the sauce tastes rounder, and the dish ends up slightly more generous than the portion might suggest.

It would be easier to buy it in. But the table is where the kitchen starts its day, and the smell of flour in the morning is part of what we are.

Flour on the table, before the first sheet of the day.

Come and see us roll the dough one morning, if you like.