Beetrot Pasta

The ongoing resolution to cook something completely different every meal for a year is snagged by a case of over ambition. We decide to cook the meal that made Jamie Oliver famous, a mix of spinach, ricotta and butternut squash encrusted in a long roll of home-made beetroot pasta, its ends tied by string. Looks gorgeous in the book.

The filling is easy. The squash is chopped and goes into the oven with salt, pepper and ground coriander. The spinach is gently cooked with garlic and nutmeg. The ricotta comes in a plastic pot. So far, so lovely jubbly.

The pasta seems to be going well until the last minute. I knead the dough (pasta flour, three eggs, two puréed beetroot) and put it in the fridge in cellophane for an hour. The pasta machine has been sitting unused in a cupboard for five years, but proves easy to work. We mangle the dough through it into long sheets: too long to fit on the table. The roll seems too ambitious at this point (there is talk of a kettle pan and we have no string) so we cut the sheets into tagliatelle-sized strips with a knife. And put them into bowls, until it’s time to cook them. Our big mistake. When pan time comes, they have coagulated together, resembling large pink octopi, with loose strands as legs. When it comes to serving them up, we try our best to cover up this doughy mess with the rest of the meal, and some rocket round the side. It tastes OK, actually, if a little chewy at times. But worryingly, afterwards, one of our guests is sick. Apologies for that, Hela. Back to the beans on toast. AL