My best pasta...by public demand....

Monica, you asked for my best pasta.Now THAT'S a challenge..
after 18 years spent between Rome and Venice and having eaten my way around the entire country it's only thanks to a wonderful metabolism that I'm not 150 kg's!
And trust me, many of those meals were pasta!

I am not a fan of processed foods or worse, canned garbage.
I prefer to cook from scratch with nice, wholesome ingredients.
Now if you cook "from scratch" in America you will do as followa:


Take one can of this
Add a bag of that
Throw in a handful of that frozen s***
and so on

I'm oldfashioned enough to think a "cake" should be made with eggs, milk and flour and not poured outta bag..but hey! That's me.....

So when we cook from scratch in Italy we tend to go to the market in the morning, select the best they have to offer and as the kitchen is perfumed by fresh basil, sun-swollen lemons and newly baked bread we throw ourselves into the art of cooking with enthusiasm! Ah....we live to eat!

In Sweden on the other hand we pulse through the knee-deep snow, manage to get to ICA, get slightly depressed over the shitty selection and dwarfed veggies, the sour fruits and the limp salad...but somehow we muster up enough courage to buy a few things...one has to eat to live...

A Rule of thumb in Italy is that it should take as long to make a pasta -sauce as it does for the pasta to boil..which is about 10-12 minutes for the dried one or just a few minutes if you use fresh stuff.
If you are gonna use the fresh pasta you'll be hard-pressed to come up with a sauce in such a short time but if you have around 10-12 minutes you'll make it, most of the time.

Most important thing: Fresh ingredients. Doesn't need to be fancy but it's gonna have to be good quality!

And then of course, the best sauce depends on the type of pasta and the time of year...if you want a meat-base, fish-base or a vegetable one....sorry you asked by now, uh?

But let's start with a very nice winterpasta for which you'll need the following:

2 big red bell-peppers /person
1 little onion
3 cloves of garlic
a good splash of nice EVOO (Extra virgin olive oil)
salt and pepper and glob of real butter
a big heap of Parmesan

and some fresh tagliatelle!

Clean and half the peppers, put them on a tray, sprinkle some oil and roast them, cut side up, in a 200 C oven until slightly coloured.
Pop them in a PAPER bag for an hour, then strip off them peel.
( This can be done the day before if you want to have a quicky lunch.)


While the water is boiling ,sweat the garlic and the onion in some oil and butter. Cut the peppers into small pieces, add.
some salt and pepper...and let it all just simmer on low heat while you cook the pasta.
When ready, throw it all together and be generous with the FRESH grated Parmesan.

Let me know what you think!
Buon Appetito!

And if I were you I'd swing some red wine with it.......