Lucie Greenwood learns to make pasta at The Milk Shed, Weston-on-the-Green

Back on January 1, during a lazy, hazy hangover, made possible by my decision to close the Milk Shed for two weeks over Christmas, I carried out the tradition of writing my New Year resolutions. Resolutions which I never fulfil, but such is the cycle of bad habits!

Fast forward to September and miraculously I have commenced operations to become a master pasta maker, an intention that has appeared on several New Year lists.

Inspired by my addiction to cooking shows and having watched countless MasterChef contestants knocking up a speedy ravioli, I wanted in on the action, so I stumped up the dosh for a KitchenAid rolling attachment, still haunted by failed attempts at using those table clamp-on machines in the 90s and, my, what a difference.

I didn’t expect it to be easy, but the first batch went like a dream, and that night we feasted on a pan full of fresh tagliatelle in cherry tomato sauce.

I couldn’t stop smiling: similar to baking a loaf of bread or making pickles, preserves, or foraged blackberry vodka. Producing food, rather than cooking a meal, is truly rewarding.

Don’t misunderstand me, I love cooking dinner or creating a new dish for the café, but in my dreams I would spend the next 20 years toiling away in a barn cutting curds or on the hillside pruning vines.

It would be a joy to spend my days making something purely fundamental – cheese, wine, oil, a loaf of bread. What else could you possibly need apart from a few vegetables?

I began with a basic pasta dough recipe: one egg to 100g ‘00’ flour and mixed it in the KitchenAid, kneaded for a couple of minutes, then rested in the fridge wrapped up. I’m used to the lovely, yielding texture of bread dough, but this is different – stiff and leathery. Using the electric roller it took a couple of minutes before I had a beautiful transparent sheet of pasta ready for a multitude of possibilities – so exciting – but I wanted to use the cutters that came with the roller and set about making reams of spaghetti and tagliatelle before realising I had to hang these beauties up to dry. So with broom handles balanced between chairs and tables, and with wooden spoons sticking out from the plate rack, I cracked on and like magic (or a biblical story) from six eggs and half a bag of flour I had enough pasta to feed a football team. Totally genius.

What I’m interested in is the stuffing and so, confident of my new found rolling skills, I set about my first ravioli.

I made a beetroot filling by roasting a few beets whole and wrapped in foil before peeling and finely grating. I mixed in herbs, breadcrumbs, goats’, ricotta and parmesan cheeses and crushed toasted pine nuts. The resulting colour was vivid and glowed like a beacon through the fine shell of half-moon agnolotti.

I will admit these were fiddly little suckers but I’m sure it’s just a question of practice before I’m able to knock them out blindfolded.

Once cooked I scooped them out of the pot and straight into a bath of sizzling brown butter and poppy seeds, before serving with freshly grated parmesan. The deep magenta pockets speckled with tiny black dots looked divine, and although my partner’s mum said “they’re quite nice apart from the taste of dirt” (not a fan of beetroot then), I thought they were dee-lish.