Nothing beats the taste of freshly homemade pasta!🤩Using a gnocchi board to make those nice indentations in my dough (but you can use the back of a fork, it works just as well), those pasta shells were very easy to make, soaking up all the sauce thanks to their shape. Bonus point for being vegan, I was really impressed with how they came out!

I loooooooooooove pasta and I love it even more when it is homemade. The tricky thing when I make some is my kitchen end up in a bit of a state with my bulky pasta machine in a corner, long sheets of pasta on all flat surfaces and flour everywhere! This pasta shape is based on the cavatelli pasta that looks a bit like a shell with no eggs required for the dough which makes them suitable for vegan.

Their preparation is quite straightforward, you don’t need any special equipment to make them and it does not take all your kitchen counters to make them either! I used the gnocchi paddle because I own one but I have tried them before with the back of a fork and it did the same job.

To go with it, I made a simple tomato sauce with peas which worked quite well at sticking to each pasta shell.

Here we go with the recipe:

Homemade pasta in a basil, pea and tomato sauce 🍝

Servings: 4

Time required: 60 minutes

Equipment required: Gnocchi board if you have or a fork will work too

Ingredients

For the pasta:

• 2 cups of pasta flour plus extra flour for dusting
• 1 cup of semolina flour
• 1 cup of water
• 2 tbsp of olive oil
• 1 tsp of turmeric

For the sauce:

• 250mL of tomato passata
• 1 can of plum tomatoes in juice
• Handful of basil leaves
• 2 tbsp of maple syrup
• 1 cup of frozen peas
• 2 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
• Salt/pepper
• Olive oil

Instructions

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix the 2 flours together and turmeric (this gives a yellow hue to the dough but you can skip it if you want it white!), create a well in the center and add the water and olive oil
2. Mix all with a fork until it starts to all come together then work the dough by hand on a flat floured surface
3. After 3-5 minutes, the dough should spring back when you poke it with your finger which means it is time to leave it to rest for 15 minutes in a covered bowl with a tea towel
4. In the meantime, prepare the sauce in a large frying pan by crushing the plum tomatoes in their juice at medium heat with your spoon
5. Add the Passata, balsamic vinegar, maple syrup, frozen peas and add salt and pepper to taste
6. Chop the basil leaves and add most of it to the sauce, reserving some for serving later on then simmer gently whilst you get on with the pasta
7. Cut the dough into 4 equal parts then roll each piece with your 2 hands against the counter to get a long sausage shape dough of ~1.5 cm in diameter
8. Cut the sausage dough in smaller pillows of around 1 cm in width and add a bit of flour on them to avoid them sticking to each other
9. Roll each pillow on your paddle board with your thumb or the stick provided or use the back of the fork to roll them
10. Boil some water with a good pinch of salt to cook your pasta
11. Cook your pasta in batches to not overcrowd your saucepan, it will only take 2 to 3 minutes (you will know as they will rise to the surface of the water)
12. Using a slotted spoon, fish out your pasta and transfer them directly into the tomato sauce
13. Repeat the process until all pasta is cooked
14. Mix the pasta with the sauce to coat them evenly and serve straight away with a bit more chopped basil, a drizzle of olive oil and some grated vegan cheese (or normal if you don’t mind regular Parmesan!)

I made 2 different color of pasta last time (omitting the turmeric in half the batch of dough) as I love the mix of colors although it was masked in the tomato sauce! Next time I will make a creamy sauce to be able to put the star of the show’s color forward!

Buon appetito! 😁