Master Pasta Class at Butta La Pasta - Part 1
Butta la pasta is, apparently, an Italian saying meaning “put the pasta on” (or literally, “throw the pasta”), which you might say when you ring home as you head back hungry from work. It’s also the name of a very charming pasta restaurant on Sheffield’s London Road. Fitting, for a place which is all about cosy, home-cooked meals that reflect the seasons. As Stephen, restaurant-owner and chef, says, the goal of the restaurant is about creating a family-friendly experience, akin to eating comforting food that feels like home.
Eating at Butta La Pasta is always a unique experience, as the menu changes every week, making the best use of whichever ingredients are in season. I could (and probably will) write a whole post about eating here. However, this time, I visited Butta La Pasta for an entirely different reason: their long-awaited Master Pasta Class.
We attended the class on a Sunday afternoon in January. There were 11 of us in total, including me and my friend, Hannah. We started the afternoon with a glass of prosecco or homemade lemonade, and introductions. We had varied levels of experience in the kitchen, but everyone at the class was a beginner at pasta-making. Stephen’s goal in running the Master Pasta Class is to show people how simple it is to make your own pasta at home, so I suppose we were the perfect group to test his first pasta class: enthusiastic, but inexperienced.
Our first task was to make a simple dough using two ingredients, semolina flour and water. Stephen gave us a demo and a quick history lesson on the Southern Italian origins of semolina pasta, before we got to work. Just as we had been told, it was pretty straightforward and the dough came together easily. Semolina dough chilling in the fridge, we then proceeded to the kitchen, where Stephen explained how to make a classic tomato sauce using just five ingredients: red onion, garlic, fresh rosemary, dried red chilli and tomatoes. Homely, to fit with Butta La Pasta’s ethos.
After this, we got to the (slightly) challenging part: egg dough. On our tables, we placed a mound of flour, in which we created a large well. Into the well went two large eggs, to be combined with the flour. It should’ve been simple, but I found out that I’d underestimated the importance of the well’s structural integrity when I mixed a little too enthusiastically, only to realise that I was recreating the 2019 Whaley Bridge dam disaster in egg and flour. As my egg spilled out of my well onto the table, and I desperately tried to stem the flow – with more flour, my hand, anything – painful memories were brought up for Hannah, who is from Whaley Bridge. Hannah, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry.
Whilst the egg dough chilled, we got to rolling the semolina dough and forming it into orecchiette. Orecchiette, if you’re not familiar with it, is Italian for “little ears'', named for their cute, ear-like shape. The only tools needed to make orecchiette are your hands and a butter knife, so it’s a really easy pasta to make at home. Orecchiette complete, we then took turns at the pasta machine to roll our egg dough before forming it into tagliatelle, and spinach and ricotta tortellini.
Our hard work paid off at the end, when we sat down together to share our orecchiette, which had been cooked up with the tomato sauce from earlier. All of the orecchiette we’d made had been combined in the sauce, so we were sharing each other’s cooking. Despite it being our first attempt, the pasta had a really nice taste and texture.
In all, the class was relaxed and friendly. Everyone there was a beginner, so there was no pressure, other than my own desire to make edible pasta. There were some aspects of the class that felt a little haphazard – we overran by a couple of hours and unfortunately underestimated the amount of filling that would be needed to fill everyone’s tortellini. However, considering it was Butta La Pasta’s first ever Master Pasta Class, this definitely didn’t prevent it from being a success.
Find out more about Butta La Pasta and their Master Pasta Class in Part 2 of this post here. You can contact Butta La Pasta to book onto their Master Pasta Class.