Bottarga & Lemon Pappardelle I love pasta! I also love lemon and bottarga, so I created this simple recipe combining all three. It’s inspired by my friend and co-author, Giovanni Pilu who introduced me to the joys of bottarga along with many other Sardinian ingredients (you can order his Aussie-made bottarga online and scroll to […]
I’m not sure why I hadn’t made this classic pasta sauce before … I love tomato, cheese and all things quick and easy. Perhaps it’s because guanciale (cured pork cheek) can be tricky to find … so when I discovered Salumi Australia’s guanciale in my local Harris Farm, I had no excuse. Amatrice, for which […]
Tagliatelle Bolognese Slow-cooked meat sauces, called ragùs, are made all over Italy, though the best known comes from Bologna in Emilia-Romagna and is the ancestor of Australia’s beloved ‘spag bol’. Not that it would ever be served with dried spaghetti in Emilia-Romagna where fresh egg pasta, like tagliatelle and fettuccine, is more typical. There are […]
This simple Roman sauce is made creamy by the combination of egg yolks and hard cheese – it doesn’t contain cream, despite the profusion of recipes using it. The origin of the name is a bit more of a mystery … ‘carbone’ is Italian for coal, and it’s been suggested that this was a favourite […]
Cacio e pepe, cheese and pepper. One of the simplest pasta sauces, this Roman classic can also be one of the trickiest to get just right. The idea is to emulsify the cheese with the starchy pasta cooking water to create a creamy sauce. A few things ensure success: quality Ingredients, ratios, temperature and vigorous […]
I love mushrooms. ‘Meat for vegetarians’ one advertising campaign called them, and I’d suggest that this super quick pasta dish is so tasty that even die-hard carnivores won’t miss the meat. In autumn, when wild mushrooms appear in farmers’ markets and good greengrocers, use gorgeous orange pine mushrooms or meaty slippery jacks instead of the Swiss […]
How often do you buy a bunch of basil, use a dozen leaves or so in a sauce or salad then wonder what to do with the rest? The answer’s easy, pesto, the famous bright green sauce of Liguria. Pesto means ‘to pound’ as this sauce is traditionally made using a mortar and pestle, but […]
The simplest recipes are often the favourites, the ones with the most views on this website are croque monsieur (a.k.a. toasted ham & cheese sandwich) and affogato (ice cream ‘drowned’ in coffee and liqueur), hardly recipes at all. So here’s another of my super simple favourites for those nights when you need something tasty but […]
Fettuccine with Black Truffle For many of us, one of the highlights of winter is truffles. But it wasn’t always so in Australia – on 18 June 1999 Duncan Garvey harvested Australia’s first Perigord black truffle in Tasmania. Since then truffles have also been cultivated in NSW, ACT, WA, Victoria and New Zealand (with plantations […]
