Notting Hill: Recipease

15:27 Alyson 6 Comments

Every time I get off the tube at Notting Hill Gate, I pass Recipease. When we were living in Notting Hill, that happened ALOT.

At first, I didn't pay much attention, then I looked at it some and chalked it up to be a kitchen goods store.

For my birthday this year though, I learned the truth of Recipease. It is partly a kitchen goods store, but even more so, it's Jamie Oliver's store that hosts cooking lessons! Paul surprised me with a voucher for a class and once I found out the real secret of it, I couldn't wait to give it a shot.

They offer lessons in all kinds of things. Steaks, street food, kids lessons, but I decided upon homemade pasta. I love pasta and Italian food, so I figured it was the perfect time to figure out how to make it at home.



The day of the class, Paul and I had a mad dash to the shop (I may have been sick and napping away through my alarm!) but we made it just in time to wash up and don our aprons. They put a maximum on the attendees to ensure there are enough work stations and that the teacher can ensure you're learning what you're doing.

We were going to be making a few different types of stuffed pasta - this one focused only on the pasta, not the sauce, although they do have another class that teaches both.  We were making ravioli, tortellini and bow-tie pasta. The instructor started off by explaining it all to us and I was amazed at how easy it was! Flour and egg, voila, you have pasta dough!

Next comes the hard part - we rolled out the dough, then fed it through the pasta press several times, each time tightening up the rolls, to make sure we got it as thin and compact as we could. Once we had our strips, we set about cutting them up into the right size and there was even a fancy cutter that helped get those cute serrated edges you see on ravioli.

After we've got our perfect cut-outs, we set to filling them with ricotta, spinach and lemon. Not too full, or they fall apart in the cooking, and then we squish up the edges to seal them up.

As we drop the pasta in water (just a quick 2-3 minutes until they rise to the surface), we also start on our sauce. Simply butter, lemon and mint to give us a rich, if not too unhealthy, topping for our pasta.

So after 1 hour (mostly due to our learning than the length of the task) and we were done, kicking up our feet with a glass of wine and a plate of our delicious creations.


Despite the simplicity of it, I haven't quite yet tried this at home since I don't have a pasta roller, but perhaps I'll find one in my stocking for Christmas?!