Lottie Lomme
It is a classic from one of the most renowned chefs when it comes to Italian cuisine. The book Pasta, full of recipes about ravioli, penne, tortellini, rigatoni, spaghetti and the many dozens of other types with the most interesting surprising sauces and fillings.
The book is also interesting if you have no experience, or plan to get, with the pasta machine, because there are plenty of recipes in it for ready-made pasta. But it's even more fun if you want to take the pasta machine out of the closet again, or if you do want to learn it.
I thought the book was beautiful. Inspirational and original. I tried five dishes. A week of pasta with Antonio Carluccio.
Pasta on Monday
Monday I made my own orecchiette with the help of a video from YouTube. You make fresh pasta yourself, then you roll a string and cut off small pieces. Then you have to scrape over it with the back of a knife to get the desired shape. Quite difficult! The orecchiette were accompanied by caponata. I love caponata, but my husband doesn't like eggplant. Next recipe.
Pasta on Tuesday
Tuesday. The pasta with celeriac sauce and ham. I didn't like it that much myself. My four-year-old son, on the other hand, ate three plates, and as most know, it's not that easy to get toddlers to eat a plate of vegetables. What would we all like?
Pasta on Wednesday
On Wednesday I made pasta with grated zucchini and spinach balls. I really liked those myself and my children were very inquisitive with the spinach balls. They ate them as if they were bitterballen. Nice out of hand. I think that's a dish that a lot of people like.
Pasta on Thursday
So nice, but I was curious about a slightly more exotic recipe. So on Thursday I tried a very special recipe for stuffed pasta. Pumpkin ravioli with the roasted pumpkin crumbled with amaretti biscuits and mostarda di cremona. mostarda di cremona, that was not so easy to get there. I finally found it at an internet store. 15 euros for a small jar. Then I decided to make it myself.
That was a bit exciting, because for that I had to boil down vinegar and sugar, and my pan was almost finished. But all's well that ends well. The mostarda di cremona I finally succeeded, and I was very happy with it, because it was a very special taste. It is a kind of chutney with a mustard aftertaste. And I could immediately try recipes from other Italian cookbooks where the mustard is an ingredient of.
Back to Carluccio's pumpkin ravioli. That one was really special. Sweet and savory at the same time, I really like that. Just like the pear and the gorgonzola, or Dutch peanut butter and sprinkles.
Pasta on Fridays
For the last day of the week I made rigatoni with Jerusalem artichoke and Jerusalem artichoke. Interesting, I thought, a forgotten vegetable. But that Jerusalem artichoke, you don't have to wake me up at night for that. That was a bit disappointing. A bit of an earthy taste. You've got to love it.
Aside from the new things I tried, I also found some classics. Spaghetti Aglio Olio for example. Or the broccoli and anchovy sauce, Gnocchi Alla Romana and the classic one ragout which is known in the Netherlands as bolognese sauce.
It seems clear to me. This cookbook provides more than one week of cooking fun. Have you ever made a Carluccio dish?
Pasta – irresistible recipes from the regional cuisines of Italy
by: Antonio Carlucci
224 pages
Price: € 24,95
Fontaine Publishers, 2014
ISBN: 9789059565364
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