I’ve been on a little “mercy dash” today to help a poor soul who has found herself volunteering to cook a special meal for someone who’d previously cooked a sumptuous feast for my friend and her family.

There was so much pressure to respond by cooking something spectacular that I was asked about the art of home-made pasta. I volunteered to go round this morning and do a demo of how to make pasta. It’s dead easy when you know how but also needs “the knack” if you see what I mean. To someone who professes to be a “rubbish cook” it seemed too scary to contemplate alone so I stepped up for the challenge.

Anyway, so I pop in to make the pasta and find myself rescuing my buddy not just from the cooking but also from a very different kind of pest, though that really is another story. I made the pasta and while it was resting before rolling I set to and made the bolognaise sauce that was going to be layered up with the pasta sheets and cheeses to make a lasagne.

Then the difficulties started – the pasta-rolling machine, on its first outing to make pasta simply refused to work. I tried to fix it, Iain tried to fix it and all to no avail so Iain was despatched to our house to procure my own machine. You just can’t get it thin enough by hand – believe me, I’ve tried! Phew – DM saved the day by shoving the pasta machine into Iain’s hands and he transported it back to the nerve-centre of the project.

When I’d finished my cooking, I left their house with a thank-you gift of a bottle of wine and the remaining pasta that wasn’t needed for the dish. Their guests were getting pasta, salad and home-made bread, while DM and I get pasta, rainbow chard (see above), spinach, cherry tomatoes, pine nuts and veggie parmesan. (Note: the chard and spinach are from our own veggie patch.)

I’m not sure who got the best out of the deal – I did spend a couple of hours cooking (but that’s my greatest pleasure in life anyway) to prepare a meal I wasn’t going to eat but let’s face it, the meal we’re getting out of the deal is pretty sweet too.

Can we make our own little rainbows? Sure we can – it’s just a matter of scale.