Pasta. Delicious wheat and egg goodness. One of the easiest things to make zero waste too. Being married to a half Italian also helps. As did a pasta making class in Tuscany on our honeymoon (thought the amount of wine consumed may have hindered the learning somewhat).

Tonight I made pasta and pesto from scratch. I’ve been making pesto for years as I have irritable bowel syndrome and can’t eat garlic. It’s really not as bad as it sounds, not being able to eat garlic. In most Australia Italian food garlic is added in such quantities that it overpowers all other flavour, but there are so many complex flavours to explore when garlic is omitted.

The key learning from the pasta course was the ratio for pasta – 100g of 00 flour to 1 egg, per person. The next most important things was if the flour doesn’t incorporate, chuck it out. We feed the crumbly egg flour mixture to our chooks. They love it.

Knead the dough, roll it up, wrap it in a bees wax wrap, and make pesto whilst it chills.

Pesto is super easy and can be made with almost any nuts and any leafy green vegetable, including broccoli. Tonight I made traditional basil and pine nut pesto as we have a lot of basil growing in our veggie garden. I never measure it. Just throw in a few handfuls of nuts, finely shredded basil, rock salt, olive oil, pepper and grated parmesan and pound to the desired consistency.

Roll and cut the pasta, toss in a lot of flour to stop it sticking together and cook in boiling water till done. Mix with pesto. Buon appetito.

The flour on the left is what didn’t mix in easily. This goes to the chooks.