This is going to be a mild rant: you’ve been warned. I went out to eat at a tremendously popular local restaurant recently, which serves Italian dishes. I deliberately am not calling it an Italian restaurant but rather one serving Italian dishes, because no true Italians would approve of it.
The usual Italo-Brit menu features various pasta dishes as a main course. No use trying to tell people here that pasta is a STARTER: they’ll insist on an enormous plate of noodles swimming in sauce for their main.
On top of that it is completely beyond me why you would want to pay nearly twenty quid for a meal that you can easily, and arguably better, make at home for a fiver.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t go out to eat pasta to save time and/or avoid cooking at home. But that should be in cheap eateries, like the trattorias and osterias scattered all over Italy. Plus, they never, ever serve pizza in restaurants except for awful tourist traps: pizza belongs in pizzerias only. And of course, never for lunch.
So, you might ask, what did I have on my evening out at that restaurant? Well, actually very well prepared calves liver with pancetta and mash. They also offer veal Milanese, chicken and various fish mains, so it’s not as if pasta is the only option. And yet, those people around me, clearly out for a more or less special dinner, were all slurping fettuccini and tucking into spaghetti with meatballs (a completely unknown dish to Italians).
Don’t get me wrong, I love pasta. I could happily eat it every day, whether the austere and small Italian portion or even yes, a lavish, saucy westernised bowl. Penne, trofie, linguine or fusilli – I adore them all. But I cook them at home because it is ridiculously easy to do well, and when I go out, I’d rather spend my money on foods I don’t or can’t make myself.
So to end my rant, let me offer some excellent and easy pasta recipes then.
First off, classic ragu or meat sauce. No, it is not served with spaghetti but with tagliatelle and yes, you can add either white or red wine to it. I also make a vegetarian version of it, mushroom ragu, which might even be tastier.
The simplest pasta sauce is pesto, and it makes so much sense to make it at home whenever you have a surplus of basil. Dress your linguine with it and add some smoked salmon if you wish.
Tomato sauce comes next, made from good tinned tomatoes. I only make pappardelle with fresh tomatoes in summer, when toms are ripe and flavoursome. Otherwise tins win every time.
But tomatoes are not the only fruit: pasta pepperonata with sauce made with red and yellow peppers is gorgeous.
Pasta makes a frugal meal: check out my recipe for pangrattato, crispy breadcrumbs aka ‘fake Parmesan’. And if you love it creamy, make fettuccine with mushrooms and riffs on thereof.
There is only one dish better than pasta and that’s pasta al forno, baked in the oven to a crispy perfection. My version of carbonara is a bake, literally not figuratively. Orzo doesn’t need preboiling and can be baked in the oven with pancetta, or lots of cream and mushrooms.
And then of course there’s lasagne, the queen of pasta bakes. Be it traditional meaty, chunky vegetable, spinach or cabbage (yes, seriously), it’s worth making in double quantity and freezing a spare dish.
I hope you’ll find this selection useful; there’s more in content pages. Try one or two at home before you go out for an overpriced dish of pappardelle drowned in watery sauce. Buon appetito!