Jonny McCambridge: The culinary disaster which made me determined to master pasta

There was also a cutting implement for snipping the sheets of rolled dough into different shapes.

What I remember rather better is the sense of chutzpah which nudged me in the direction of making such an extravagant purchase. While I had an interest in cooking, it was probably more relevant to point out that I was stuffed with the confidence and naivety of youth.

Then my career was still on the upward trend and I believed I would make a success of anything I turned my hand to. I had never made pasta in my life but assumed that I would master the skill more or less overnight. I was unused to failure.

However, making fresh pasta is hard, with or without an expensive machine. There is a reason why skills and techniques are passed down through the generations and why Italian nonnas take several decades to master them before passing on the secrets.

My attempts were a debacle. I struggled with the consistency of the dough. When I did manage to persuade some of the mixture to move through the rollers of the machine, it quickly broke into pieces and much of it ended up on the floor.

In the end I gathered lumps of the dough into thick balls and attempted to cook it. It was claggy, starchy and inedible. My wife still jokes about how it was the worst meal which I ever served her.

I quickly gave up. The pasta making machine was pushed to the back of the cupboard and was never used again. At some point, between moving houses, it was donated to a charity shop as nearly new.

My love of cooking has continued, but I never repeated my attempt at making fresh pasta. As I grew older, I came to view the experience as a lesson in humility. I failed because I had not yet learnt the virtues of patience and practice.

Perhaps it is because I have recently returned from holiday in Italy that something is stirring. My wife fears the worst when she discovers me awake at 4am watching YouTube tutorials about pasta making.

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Remember what happened last time?”

I do remember.

What is different now is that I have no real expectation of success. I am expecting to fail. And fail again. But I hope to learn something which enables me not to fail so extravagantly.

I remember my problems from decades before with the dough. I begin with an experimental approach. I make a dough using type 00 flour. I make another with semolina flour. I make one using a combination.

I try a dough that contains eggs. Then one that has no eggs. I practice different lengths of kneading time. I have several lumps of dough resting in my fridge.

I move on to shaping. Once upon a time I had a fancy machine. Now, I have a rolling pin and the power of my forearms. I spend an hour rolling out sheets under the heavy lump of wood, thinner and thinner until they are almost translucent when I hang them.

I experiment with shapes. I cut off a lump of dough and roll it out under my fingers until it is like a rope.

Then I slice it into pieces and boil them quickly in a pan of salted water. But the end product has the same quality as the disastrous meal from 20 years earlier, heavy and starchy. The work goes on.

I roll out another length of dough. However, this time I keep going until the length is more like a shoelace than a rope. Only now do I cut it into small parts. Then I cut all the small parts into half again.

I practice using my fingers to create shapes. I remember the various techniques that I saw on YouTube, but I have to find one that is comfortable for me.

A significant quantity of dough ends up squashed, broken and in the bin.

And then something begins to work. If I roll my thumb heavily and quickly across the surface of a tiny bit of dough it shapes and curls it neatly like a shell or a leaf. If I get the timing slightly wrong, then the shape resembles a pile of dog poo which has been stepped in. I keep going, separating the ones that work from the failed efforts.

Finally, I have enough that I can make two bowls of pasta for dinner. The clock on the cooker tells me that I have been making pasta for close to 10 hours.

Every surface in the kitchen is covered in flour, as am I. I have a cut on one thumb and a burn on the other. Every container that I own is filled with pasta shapes.

I am not sure that I can forward any argument that this is a logical or sensible way to spend a day. They sell packets of pasta in the shop just down the road for less than a pound that can be cooked in a few minutes.

That night I serve my wife a bowl of my pasta shapes in a homemade tomato sauce. She is a little suspicious at first, but soon she is eating with enjoyment.

When her bowl is empty she goes back to the pot for another helping. I poke at my own food. I’m a little tired and don’t have much of an appetite.

I also know that while the pasta is better, it is still not right. I don’t really mind, I’ve got the rest of my life to master pasta.

I understand the virtues of patience and practice better now, and how to laugh when I get it wrong.