I am writing this whilst listening to Brandon Flowers’ new album which is amazing (if you like that sort of thing). Anyway, last month I did a post about the lavender in my garden and how I though that a few fresh lavender flowers would go really well with some home-made pasta. Well, news flash, they do and they are delicious.

For the pasta I used an adaptation of Jamie Oliver’s basic egg pasta dough recipe but just altered the quantities to suit us. Also, we found that pasta making is a two person job, one to roll, on to stop it falling on the floor!

• 300g pasta flour
• 2 whole free range eggs
• 2 free range egg yolks

For the ricotta and lavender filling:

• 250g ricotta cheese
• Handful of fresh oregano
• Teaspoon of fresh lavender flowers

Mix the cheese, oregano and lavender together in a bowl.

To make the pasta:-

Beat the eggs together in a jug.

Put the flour in a large bowl and make a well in the centre.

Gradually add the eggs and mix together. At this point my dough was very dry and hard so I added a little water until the dough came together. Give it a good knead and bash it about for a bit before wrapping it in a piece of cling film and putting it in the fridge for half an hour.

When the dough it chilled, start to roll it out. If you have a pasta roller, keep rolling it though until it is a few millimeters thick.

Lay it out on the side in one long piece.

At intervals, place a couple of teaspoons of your filling along half of the dough. Then bring the other half over the top so you get a layer of pasta, a blob of filling and then a layer of pasta.

Cut the pasta in to squares and jazz up the edges using the prongs of a fork.

Bring a pan of salted water to the boil and carefully drop in the ravioli. Cook for about 3 minutes.

Drain and serve with a drizzle of olive oil and some coarsely grated parmesan.

~

Jamie Oliver’s recipe is as follows, it states it will serve 4 but I think that it will feed many more than that. Also, he uses Tipo “OO” flour. I just used normal pasta flour that you can pick up anywhere.

• 600g Tipo “OO” flour
• 6 eggs or 12 egg yolks.