Roasted Aubergine & Cherry Tomato Ravioli with Pesto

This is a truly excellent dish, if I may say so myself :-) Roasting the aubergine and cherry tomatoes before whizzing them up for the filling really concentrates their flavour, and as a result each mouthful of  ravioli is an explosion of delight.  I chose to serve them drizzled with pesto, as aubergine and tomato both marry well with garlic and basil to make a scrumptious, summery pasta dish.

Prawn & Lobster Ravioli in a Lobster Bisque Sauce

I have just invested in a new, top of the range pasta making machine, and I must say I am so happy with this purchase! Compared to the one I had before, it rolls the pasta to a silky,  almost transparent texture, which is perfect for making stuffed pasta such as ravioli (in case you are wondering, the make is Marcato). I have chosen to christen my new pasta making machine by making these luscious ravioli with a prawn and lobster stuffing, drizzled with a rich lobster bisque-like sauce. A real treat, if you are a seafood lover like me!

Spaghettini with Caramelised Fennel

The inspiration for this dish came to me after watching an episode of Nigel Slater's "Dish of the Day" TV series. I love the man! I find that him and I share the same approach to cooking, as in by not really following a recipe but letting the ideas come from the ingredients sitting in the fridge or in the cupboard, or from what looks good on the market stalls or supermarket shelves when we go shopping. That's how Nige and I roll :-) I watched him making fennel and feta linguine and a few days later made my own version for a Saturday lunch, since all I had left in the fridge at that point of the week was a fennel bulb. It was delicious: through the cooking process, the fennel loses his distinctive aniseed taste and all you are left with is a moreish sweetness.

Ragú (a.k.a. authentic Bolognaise Sauce)

It's been a while since I wanted to write a post on ragú, also known outside of Italy as "Bolognaise sauce", from the city of Bologna where it originates.  Now, I know that exported dishes tend to lose their authenticity: either they acquire characteristics that make them more palatable to the locals, or are adapted with the use of familiar ingredients. Of course, a Thai curry eaten in a restaurant in Aberdeen is bound to be very different experience from one savoured in Bankgok, mainly because sourcing the numerous fresh exotic components that make a fragrant curry paste in deep Scotland may prove to be a challenge.  However, I fail to understand how ragú, a simple sauce made of a few specific ingredients, could evolve so significantly :-) Ragú is made of a cut of beef suitable for braising, chopped in very small pieces, slow cooked for a couple of hours in red wine and beef stock, and flavoured with onion, celery, carrot and bay leaf. That's it: nothing else. No mushrooms, no sweetcorn, no chillies, no tomato ketchup and for the love of God no garlic ;-) Finally, the way to serve ragú is to take a small amount (just enough to coat the pasta) and gently toss it freshly made tagliatelle, cooked al dente, and finished with a sprinkling of freshly grated Parmesan cheese; not dropping a big ladleful on top of some glutinous, overcooked spaghetti. Forget the dreadful spag-bol and have a go at making real ragú, you won't be going back!

Pesto, Roasted Tomato & Mushroom Pasta Salad

This is an example of how to employ the freshly made pesto of my previous post. This summery pasta salad is best served at room temperature; a quality that makes it great lunch box filler, bursting with flavour and goodness. You'll make all your colleagues with their fridge cold, packaged ham and cheese sandwiches green with envy :-)

Pesto

Pesto is an Italian pasta sauce that comes from the lovely Liguria region, which is lapped by the gentle waves of the Mar Ligure (Ligurian Sea). It literally translates as "pounded", which is an apt description of what happens to the few ingredients it is made of: they are all pounded to an intoxicatingly beautiful smelling paste. Traditionally, pesto is paired with trenette, a kind of flat, narrow pasta shape; however, I find that its simple but intense flavour makes it a wonderfully versatile ingredient that can be drizzled on bruschetta, pizza, a roasted tomato salad, grilled seafood, roast chicken, baked fish, boiled new potatoes and so on. You can make it using a food processor, however the contact of the metal blades with the basil will cause the latter to lose its vibrant green colour in favour of a less attractive greyish one. If you can, use a pestle and mortar: it's much more fun and also a healthy way of releasing any suppressed stress or anger :-)

Fresh Tagliatelle with Prawns & Courgette

Fresh pasta requires a sauce that does it justice. A few selected ingredients that marry well together and go to envelope the silky strands of tagliatelle that you have rolled out with such care a few hours before. I do love the combination of prawns and courgette and use it regularly in my recipes (see king prawns in a prosecco and cream sauce): here, I have grated the courgette to give a creamy texture to the sauce and create a nice contrast with the juicy chunks of prawns. The pink/green/pale yellow colour scheme is a visual feast, too.

How to Make Fresh Pasta

I have recently conquered the skill of making fresh pasta. I have said conquered, and not acquired, for a specific reason: just like it happened before with shortcrust pastry, I had previously attempted to  make ravioli at home following a recipe from one of my cookbooks. To say that the results were disappointing, is to pay myself a compliment. The filling was good, but the pasta was too thick and rubbery, and I just could not figure out what had gone wrong in the process. This is not acceptable, I thought. I am Italian, for goodness' sake, pasta making is in my genes! However, given that I moved to the UK to go to Uni and lived abroad ever since, I never had the opportunity to learn this skill from the source, i.e. my grannies. Therefore, I decided to take the bull by the horn and signed up for a pasta-making class, taught nonetheless by the brilliant Valentina Harris (the course took place at the Bertinet Kitchen in Bath, and it was an amazing birthday gift from my boyfriend's parents and grandparents). Thanks to Valentina, I have learnt that pasta is a temperamental lady that will come to you if you follow a few simple steps with the utmost care, but will unceremoniously stand you up if you rush through the process and do not treat her with the respect she deserves. This said, please know that after a couple of attempts you will find that making pasta is surprisingly easy and oh so rewarding! The possibilities for shapes and flavour combinations are endless, and it is such a great dinner party trick to have up one's sleeve. One of my earliest memories is that of my grannies in the kitchen; one of them making ravioli, the other tagliatelle, to feed our immediate family of 25 :-). I am proud to be perpetuating this tradition - even though there's only two of us, for now!

Pasta with Grilled Vegetables & Smoked Pancetta

This dish is one that you can enjoy guilt-free, as it accomplishes the hard task of being both delicious and healthy. Grilling the vegetables imparts bags of flavour, while the smoked pancetta's strong taste means you don't need too much of it. As you can see from the picture, I have also used three different short pasta formats, as a way to employ the many "nearly finished" packets in my cupboard. Doing this not only will help you clearing up space in your kitchen, but it will introduce a few more textures in the dish. If you want to do the same, remember to: stick to the same size of pasta (either short or long format, you can't mix both) and pay attention to the cooking times that the various shapes require (you may have to add one format to your pan first, boil it for a few minutes and then add the second, and so on).

Pennette Pasta with Fresh Crab, Plum Tomatoes & Chilli

Crab is in season and I found a beautiful specimen on display on the counter at my fishmonger's, having arrived fresh from Devon on the same morning. A tip on crab: if you can, buy a whole one and pick the meat out yourself, as you will end up with infinitely more delicious white meat than if you'd buy a dressed crab. Sure, it involves a little effort, however for only £10 a whole crab gave me a massive bowl of white crabmeat, which generously serves four people.

Orecchiette Pasta with Tomatoes, Olives and Rocket

We could call this the offspring of a peppery bowl of rocket salad and a tomato sauce pasta dish, who met on a warm summer evening and produced this tasty supper :-) There are so few ingredients here, you need the best tomatoes, olives and rocket you can find, as they all have to contribute with intense, bold flavours. I chose orecchiette (a pasta shape typical from the Puglia region in Italy, which translates as "little ears") because their concave conformation is ideal to receive this thick sauce, and keep it in their little pockets, ready to explode in your mouth.

Stringy Pasta

This recipe is 'dedicated' to the people that say they don't have time to cook. It takes about 15 minutes to make from scratch, it is healthy, tasty and definitely more rewarding to eat than something that has just come out of the microwave. Pretty much all the ingredients bar the mozzarella are stuff that people tend to have in their cupboard anyways, so it takes very little planning from your side. A tip on the mozzarella: you can buy it and freeze it on the day of purchase, so you will have it handy when you decide to cook this dish and won't even have to go to the shops!

Spinach & Ricotta Cannelloni

Here's another traditional Italian recipe. And I know that every Italian will tell you this, but...this version is unique because it has the special filling that my nonna (granny) uses, and inherited from her mother. This whole thing is a tad cliché, I admit it.  But the recipe honestly isn't! Read more to find out the family secret...

Spaghetti with Mussels

Since this is my first post, I thought I'd start with something that is within my comfort zone. Being Italian, that means pasta! A nice plate of spaghetti with mussels is a beautiful thing made by a few simple ingredients; yet as for all the simple things, it is so easy to mess up. The countless times I had this dish and either the spaghetti was overcooked, or the sauce bland, or worst of all I found myself chewing on a gritty mouthful of pasta and...sand.  This is a step by step demonstration that will show you how to create a simple, yet incredibly tasty, spaghetti with mussels.