Pasta is THE staple food of the Italian cuisine in Melbourne, so how can we not serve this in our Italian restaurant? Here at Pretty Boy, we hand-make all of our pasta daily, and serve it just like we remember how our grandmothers would have made it; fresh, hot, and filled with love.

After a successful Gin Gin and Pasta Spin with the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival, our executive Chef Michael Smith is excited to continue to share his passions. Below, Chef Michael Smith has the perfect recipe on how to make the best pasta in the world.

“I’d much rather eat pasta and drink wine than be a size 0” – Sophia Loren

As easy as making pasta may look, it definitely takes some practice, so perfect this technique so you won’t ‘forgetti’.

Ingredients

4 large free-range eggs

400 g Tipo '00' flour

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Method

1. Place the flour on a board or in a bowl. Make a well in the centre and crack the eggs into it. Beat the eggs with a fork until smooth.

2. Using the tips of your fingers or a fork, mix the eggs with the flour, incorporating a little at a time, until everything is combined.

3. Knead the pieces of dough together, you can also make your dough in a food processor if you’ve got one. Just put everything in, blend until the flour looks like breadcrumbs, then tip the mixture on to your work surface and bring the dough together into one lump, using your hands.

4. Knead and work it with your hands to develop the gluten in the flour.
   (There’s no secret to kneading. You just have to pound the dough around a bit with your hands – squashing it into the table, reshaping it, pulling it, stretching it, squashing it again. It’s quite hard work, and after a few minutes it’s easy to see why the average Italian grandmother has arms like Frank Bruno! You’ll know when to stop – it’s when your pasta starts to feel smooth and silky instead of rough and floury).
   
   Then all you need to do is wrap it in cling film and put it in the fridge to rest for at least half an hour.

5. If you haven't got a pasta machine it's not the end of the world! When it comes to rolling, the main problem you'll have is getting the pasta thin enough to work with. The way around this is to roll lots of small pieces of pasta rather than a few big ones. You'll be rolling your pasta into a more circular shape than the long rectangular shapes you'll get from a machine, but use your head and you'll be all right!

6. Dust your work surface with some flour, take a lump of pasta dough the size of a large orange and press it out flat. Set the pasta machine at its widest setting - and roll the lump of pasta dough through it. Lightly dust the pasta with flour if it sticks at all.

7. Click the pasta machine down a setting and roll the pasta dough through again. Fold the pasta in half, click the pasta machine back up to the widest setting and roll the dough through again. Repeat this process five or six times. It might seem like you're getting nowhere, but in fact you're working the dough, and once you've folded it and fed it through the rollers a few times, you'll feel the difference. It'll be smooth as silk, which means you're making wicked pasta!

8. Now it's time to roll the dough out properly, working it through all the settings on the machine, from the widest down to around the narrowest. Lightly dust both sides of the pasta with a little flour every time you run it through.

9. Once you've rolled your pasta the way you want it, you need to shape or cut it straight away, don't leave it more than a minute or two before cutting or shaping it.

It’s as simple as that! Don’t want to make your own but want to have the best pasta experience?