Henry Caspar (Weston CEO Mike Caspar's youngest son) shows off his black tongue after enjoying squid ink sauce in Greece.

...But seriously, making your own jet-black strands of pasta is really cool. And shockingly easy. And because the pasta dough absorbs the squid ink, you don't have to worry about dying your tongue black. Unless you want to. In which case, see above.


So anyway, we died our noodles with squid ink, tossed them in lemon juice & olive oil, and in keeping with the theme, threw in some calamari, capers, peppadews, kalamata olives, garlic, and mint. Trust us, you want our recipe.

serves 4-6

- Ingredients -
2 cups flour (we use spelt flour, but you could use semolina or even all-purpose flour)
2 eggs
2 tablespoons squid ink

4 oz capers
2 oz marinated peppadews*
2 oz kalamata olives*
2 oz marinated garlic*
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon minced mint leaves

*you can usually find these at your local grocer's olive bar

- Tools -
Roma Pasta Machine
Roma Bamboo Drying Rack

Form a mound of flour and dig a well into its center (you can do this on a large cutting board - we prefer a large bowl to reduce the mess). Break your eggs into the well and drop in the ink. Use a fork to scramble the egg and ink, then mash the flour into the well until you have a uniform ball of dough. Cover with plastic wrap or place in a sandwich bag and allow to rest for 20 minutes.

Mound of flour with a well of eggs and squid ink in its center

Pull a palm-sized chunk from the dough and feed it into your pasta machine. Keep the rest of the dough covered. Feed the sheet through until you've reached the third to last setting, then feed the sheet into the pasta cutter of your choice (we used the spaghetti cutter that comes with the Roma Traditional Style Pasta Machine). Repeat for the remainder of your dough, stringing the pasta strands over your Pasta Drying Rack to keep them separated as you work.

Handmade squid ink pasta dough is fed into the pasta machine until it reaches proper thickness

We used the spaghetti cutter that comes with the Roma Manual Pasta Machine to make our noodles

Place a pot of water on to boil. Boil the fresh pasta for 3 minutes, or until soft. Place into a large skillet with remaining ingredients, except the mint. Toss several times to mix the ingredients evenly throughout the pasta. Allow to sauté, just until all ingredients are hot, stirring constantly to ensure the noodles don't stick.

Serve immediately, hot, with mint leaves sprinkled over top of each dish.