Ever since I can remember I have loved pasta, right from my very first taste of spaghetti on toast. Of course my taste in pasta has grown up a little bit since then, but I still enjoy the odd ‘on toast’ experience too. But for some strange reason I have always thought pasta was something you had to buy because it was so complicated to make. In my mind I had images of Delia Smith rolling long thin strips of pastry through a machine and hanging the resultant strands on the backs of dining room chairs to dry for 24 hours. Don’t ask me where I got that idea from though, maybe an old program of hers?
Anyway, there I was tonight, sitting crocheting away like an old granny, with half an eye on the Jamie Oliver program, Ministry of Food, (Boy do I admire that man’s passion and common sense!) and he pops out with a recipe for pasta that even I could make on the busiest of days!
100grms (4oz) of flour and one egg. Mix to a dough, roll out thin, curl the edge over and roll in to a tube, then slice the tube, and hey presto, you have manageable lengths of pasta ready to go in the pan!
Guess what I’m having for dinner tomorrow….
If it is so easy to make, how did I get the idea it was so hard? The simple and obvious answer is I have fallen victim to clever marketing, yet again! They should teach consumer skills in schools I tell you! And you should be able to get a degree in the science of debunking advertising!
Any one who is interested in reducing their spending has read one of the many posts online about making your own washing powder, and that too is a lot simpler than marketers would have you believe, so I wonder how many other things that I now buy, thinking I can’t make a reasonable version myself, are on my shopping list.
Think about it, a 1.5 kilo bag of flour costs (if you buy the cheap stuff) £0. 46p, half a dozen eggs are £1.30, so that’s 3p for the flour and 21p for the egg, a total of 24p! Pasta if you buy it dried is 90p, and upwards of £1.90p if you buy it fresh!
Yes it takes a little longer to make your own than to buy it, IF you don’t add in the time it takes to go to the shop, find the pasta, wait in line to pay, and then transport it home, but if you do factor that in, then if you make your own, from things you already have in the kitchen, you are ahead monetarily and time wise BIG TIME!
I’m off to go through my shopping list again, just in case there is something there that I could be making myself for a fraction of the cost.
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3 comments:
I always make my own pasta.. taste so much better..
Try cutting some into squares and dropping either cheese or cooked ground meat in the middle, place anothe square on top, using finger brush a tiny bit of egg around edge and crimp with fork. drop in boiling water to make stuffed pasta (sorry, can't remember the name of it.. to early in the morning :)
I'll have to do a blog about making some different pasta things.
I've never ate spaghetti on toast but I bet that would be good. I'll have to try it.
Here in the UK you can buy tins of string spaghetti in a very unhealthy tomato sauce, we consider it as a cheap snack food.
I'm gonna have to try your idea for the pasta, that type is my favorite!
Thanks for this recipe! I too have been wondering about those pasta machines.. would it ever get used etc?? I am going to make my own from now on! One thing though - what sort of flour do you use - plain?
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