NEW YORK - With some water, and that's pretty much all you need to make one of my favorite foods of all time, pasta. 

At Aunt Jake's Restaurant on West 8th Street in Greenwich Village, diners don't only get to eat hand made pasta creations but actually make the pasta themselves.

Aunt Jake's chef and partner Carmine Di Giovanni gave me a private lesson. They have been teaching folks to make their favorite varieties since first opening in Little Italy six years ago, now classes are held at their second location in the village.   

"They can really have a great experience, lose three hours of your  afternoon on tour, and learn how to make some pasta," Di Giovanni said.

It's messy, for me at least, but fun. The pasta is kneeded into a nice smooth dough, and then rolled into sheets. That's when you can start picking shapes like farfalle, like little bowties or butterflies.  

And there's more. We also made the tubular garganelli. There's a lot of options, because there's a lot of varieties of pasta, beyond the old favorites like ziti, rigatoni and penne.    

"There are close to I think over 250 different shapes of pasta," Di Giovanni said.

And the chef doesn't really think too much about what type of pasta his guests choose to make, as long as they have fun and enjoy.   

"I'll go through the class, I'll show  show them all the different shapes. And then I will really leave it in their hands. If they want to make butterfly pasta like the farfalle, they make butterflies. If they want to make parppadelli, they make parppadelli. If they want more sheets, we make more sheets. For me, I don't care what they make. It's their world, I'm just teaching it," Di Giovanni said.

Now if you're ready to make and then eat your own pasta, they have the pasta lab here every Saturday and Sunday at 3:30 p.m.

To find out more head to auntjakesnyc.com.