Vibrant homemade pasta that's super-fun to make and packed with nutritious spinach.

Ingredients:

• 200g baby spinach
• 300g Tipo 00 or plain flour, plus extra for dusting
• olive oil
• 4 cloves of garlic
• ½ teaspoon dried red chilli flakes
• 200g baby courgettes
• 320g ripe cherry tomatoes, on the vine
• 50g pine nuts
• ½ a bunch of fresh basil (15g)
• 50g Parmesan cheese
• extra virgin olive oil

Method: (9 Steps)

• In a food processor, blitz the spinach and flour until a ball of dough forms, letting the machine do all the work. Touch the dough – it shouldn’t be sticky, you want a playdough consistency, so add a little more flour, if needed.
• To make the pici, simply tear off 2cm balls of dough and roll them out into long thin sausage shapes – think fine green beans – on a clean surface (the beauty is that they’re all different, so get little helpers involved, if you can).
• Cook the pici straight away, or leave them to dry out for a few hours, or even overnight.
• Put a large pan of salted water on to boil. Put a large frying pan on a medium heat with 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Peel, finely slice and add the garlic, along with the chilli flakes.
• Finely slice and add the courgettes, then halve and add the tomatoes. Cook it all for 5 minutes, then stir in the pine nuts and add a ladleful of boiling water. Leave on the lowest heat while you cook the pasta.
• Add the pici to your pan of boiling salted water. If it’s freshly rolled it will only need about 5 minutes, but if you’ve let it dry give it 8 to 10 minutes, checking on it to make sure you get lovely al dente pasta.
• Drain, reserving a mugful of cooking water, then toss through the veg.
• Reserving the baby basil leaves, finely slice the bigger ones and stir into the pan with most of the finely grated Parmesan, loosening with a little reserved water, if needed.
• Divide between your warm plates and serve with a few drips of extra virgin olive oil, with the remaining Parmesan and the baby basil leaves sprinkled over.