Classic Pasta Cookbook Book

It's not every chef or cookery writer who gets his old mum to write a Foreword to his book. But if the said mum happens to be the Godmother of Italian cooking then a word from her, surely, introducing her boy to his readership, will do the fortunes of the family firm no harm? Thus the Foreword to Giuliano Hazan's Classic Pasta Cookbook is contributed by the great Marcella, who in evidence of her son's devotion to pasta vouchsafes a glimpse of his tortelloni-gorging feats, aged three. Evidently he hasn't looked back. The Classic Pasta Cookbook, produced to Dorling Kindersley's immaculate visual house standards, is a comprehensive pasta manual, dealing successively with recognising the scores of different shapes of it, with making it, saucing it, stuffing it and baking it. A long introductory chapter dealing with "Classic Sauces" ("Pesto", "Pomodoro e Basilico", "Puttanesca", "Ragu", "Carbonara" and so on) is followed by sections giving recipes for the different groups of pasta shapes--long, ribbons, tubes and so forth--carefully distinguishing between the types of sauce suitable for the various shapes. Long, dried pasta such as spaghetti take better to sauces based on olive oil, tomatoes or seafood, such as the basic but wonderful "Aglio e Olio", the barely-cooked "Alla Checca" (fresh tomatoes, herbs and Mozzarella) or "Al Tonno Fresco" (with fresh tuna and roasted peppers). Hand-made ribbon egg-pasta shapes such as fettucine are more appropriate to cream and butter-based sauces such as the classic "Al'Alfredo" (butter and cream) or Marcella's "Al Limone" (lemon and cream).The Classic Pasta Cookbook really is one of those books you could find yourself using over and over again. The selection of recipes is comprehensive and wide ranging; the dishes themselves are put together with great discrimination and skill. No wonder his mother's proud of him. --Robin DavidsonRead More