Pasta Every Way for Every Day Cookbook
Simmer your way to pasta perfection with these delicious pasta recipes and take a masterclass in serving up perfect pasta with chef and cooking teacher Eric Treuille and Italian food expert Anna del Conte.
Discover which pasta works best with which sauce and learn the ten commandments for guaranteed success. Fuss-free recipes are arranged over 12 chapters by ingredient so you can choose according to what’s in your cupboard.
Plus, they’re sign-posted as no-cook, quick-cook, or slow-cook so you know at a glance which fits your life. Menu ideas with think-ahead tips help you prepare and plan.
Forget ready-made meals, change the way you cook pasta forever and learn to whip up fast, fresh and fabulous sauces in the time it takes to boil water. Cook up classic sauces like pesto and puttanesca, quick options like tuna with lemon and capers and sauces to impress such as scallops with crème fraîche and dill.
Pasta proves that fast food doesn’t have to be takeaway when you have pasta in the pantry.
Pasta. Every Way for Every Day | By Eric Treuille & Anna Del Conte | Publisher: Dorling Kindersley | Published: 2nd June 2008 | Price: £9.99
Pasta facts
• Italians ate the usual yearly amount of pasta in spaghetti shape (rather than the actual mix of pasta shapes) they would eat approximately 600,000,000 km - enough to wind around the earth 15,000 times.
• Although there are at least 500 varieties of pasta, Italians are quite conservative about what they buy and out of each 10kg of pasta purchased, 6kg is usually spaghetti.
• Buitoni is the leading dry pasta brand in the UK - over seven times the size of its next branded rival, with the highest awareness among consumers
[source: Nestlé UK]
• Under Italian law, dry pasta can only be made from durum wheat semolina flour
[source: Wikipedia]
• The Chinese are on record as having eaten pasta as early as 5,000 B.C.
• Contrary to popular belief, Marco Polo did not discover pasta. The ancient Italians made pasta much like we do today. Although Marco Polo wrote about eating Chinese pasta at the court of Kubla Khan, he probably didn’t introduce pasta to Italy. In fact, there’s evidence suggesting the Etruscans made pasta as early as 400 B.C. The evidence lies in a bas-relief carving in a cave about 30 miles north of Rome. The carving depicts instruments for making pasta - a rolling-out table, pastry wheel and flour bin. And further proof that Marco Polo didn’t “discover” pasta is found in the will of Ponzio Baestone, a Genoan soldier who requested “bariscella peina de macarone” - a small basket of macaroni. His will is dated 1279, 16 years before Marco Polo returned from China.
• Christopher Columbus, one of Italy’s most famous pastaphiles, was born in October, National Pasta Month.
• Legend has it that noodles were first made by 13th century German bakers who fashioned dough into symbolic shapes, such as swords, birds and stars, which were baked and served as bread. In the 13th century, the Pope set quality standards for pasta.
• Thomas Jefferson is credited with introducing macaroni to the United States. It seems that he fell in love with a certain dish he sampled in Naples, while serving as the U.S. Ambassador to France. In fact, he promptly ordered crates of “macaroni,” along with a pasta-making machine, sent back to the States.
• The Spanish explorer Cortez brought tomatoes back to Europe from Mexico in 1519. Even then, almost 200 years passed before spaghetti with tomato sauce made its way into Italian kitchens.
[source: National Pasta Association]