This Sunday morning we had the TV is on the Lifestyle channel and Jamie Oliver was on doing an inexplicable stage show.

I say inexplicable because it seemed to involve more than just a cooking demo, including singing, competitions and things generally not related to cooking.

But, he did one thing - he made pasta from scratch, which struck me as being remarkably straight forward - so for the first time I thought I’d have a go at something I saw on TV.

The basic method

Per serve of pasta, you’ll need 2 eggs and a cup of plain flour. Mix them together with a fork in a bowl for a few minutes until you have a dough (use your hands after the first bit of mixing once you have something a little dryer).

Now, if you have ‘large’ eggs the dough is likely to be very sticky, just add a bit more flour until you get something that is more doughy and non-sticky (so it rolls into a smooth ball). If its too dry, then use a few drops of a water to wet it up a bit.

One you have a dough, then you need to take it out and flatten it, fancy folk have a pasta maker, but if you have a rolling pin just through some flour on a cutting board and roll it out. It will take a bit of rolling to get it thin enough (I rolled it until I thought it was thin enough, then did it twice more!)

After you have flat thin sheets fold it (lightly) over so its sort of folded sheets and then cut into thin lines. (The folding makes cutting into strips a lot easier)

After you’ve flattened and cut then sort of throw it lightly around to separate all the folded lines into more traditional fetticine.

Throw into boiling water for about 4 minutes - and you have hot, cooked pasta!