Food is sexy, there’s no doubt about it and figs are one of the sexiest fruits I can imagine and fresh figs are truly things of sensual beauty. If you get a good one, the right one will see you swooning in ecstasy. Get a dry, light one and you’ll probably wonder what all the fuss is about and you won’t feel the sexy vibe at all whilst others will be moaning in pleasure at their juicy fig. It’s like being at a Swinger’s party where everyone is having a good time except for you. Or so I’ve heard.
It may sound provocative, but I am up for anything. Cooking for events that is. If I have the time, I will have a dish for you. So when my girlfriends and I decided to hold a Girl’s Night in for Breast Cancer Awareness evening this month, I knew I could contribute a pink dish. The only hitch? They wanted something savoury for the dinner. Sweets were sorted and were baggsed eagerly by the rest of the girls. They saved me the main as they knew that I liked a challenge (either that or they didn’t want to deal with a pink main). I have been frantically busy with the Sydney International Food Festival so I hadn’t really thought about what to do until a review copy of The Silver Spoon Pasta landed on my doorstep. I flicked through it poring over pasta dishes for my husband (who is a pasta fiend) before seeing a dish that was so perfect for my girlfriends and I that I placed the ribbon bookmark (pink of course, see it was a sign!) in that page.
That evening, I contemplated my liquor cabinets. I needed 200mls of white wine and when I looked up, I saw a bottle of the perfect thing, Moet Brut Rose in exactly the right size in a blushing pink shade! As I was walking home I realised that I hadn’t bought flowers and when I was about to turn back I spied a big overgrown tree full of pink flowers spilling out of the neighbours fence onto the street. I snipped some and took this as another sign that the universe was in support of the pink dinner.
It was relatively quick to make and everyone adored it and yes I know, I know, it’s not strictly pink is it. I perhaps should not have used the porcini fettucine as that has a decidedly brown shade to it and a regular pasta (or indeed a beetroot pasta) would have been more fitting but I had not the inclination to make some nor did I see any to purchase. I did explore some recipes for beetroot pasta but many had said that the colours drains from the vivid pink to a pale pink which just would have been rather disappointing. I do prefer my smoked salmon uncooked but it wasn’t too bad at all and it was eaten happily by all with some taking seconds.
As for The Silver Spoon Pasta, this was a cookbook that many of these girlfriends wanted. The Silver Spoon is seen by many as the definitive cookbook for Italian just as Je Sais Cuisiner or I Know How To Cook is to French. Originally published in 1950 by the Architecturel magazine Domus, the recipes are easily achievable as the ingredients are easily sourced (with perhaps the exception of a white Bianco D’Alba truffle). The photographs are lovely but simple in styling, often styled in a bowl or pot on a textured surface.
Maltagliati with Peppers
The book of 350 recipes is split into two sections: dried pasta versus fresh pasta with the dried pasta further split into long pasta such as linguine, spaghetti and less common ones like Buccatini and Bavette among others and short dried pasta like Fusilli, Rigatoni and less common ones like Ruote and Sedani. The fresh pastas range from Cut pastas like Bigoli, fettucine and my favourite papardelle (for which I now have 9 new recipes!) as well as pastas like Maltagliati which means “badly cut” in Italian. The other fresh pastas are filled pastas including Agnolotti, Pansotti, the wonton-like Casonsei and Tortellini. You get the picture though, we’re talking every shape of pasta you could dream up. The fresh pasta section comes with 3 recipes for fresh pasta dough (plain, green and red, how Italian flag!).
Most of the recipes for the sauces are made up of 6-7 ingredients or less including things like olive oil, butter and salt and pepper so they’re very achievable. Preparation times and cooking times are listed for each recipe so it is easy to figure out which ones are good for fast cooking after work particularly if you buy the fresh pasta (although there are instructions for making your own pasta too, should the urge strike). They explain the differences in wheat flour used for dried versus fresh pasta (fresh or homemade pasta uses soft wheat flour) and they explain why the addition of egg improves the consistency and how each should be cooked – fresh pasta absorbs more water and requires less time to cook and can be stored for up to 15 days. Also importantly they teach you which sauces match with which pastas.
I’m seeing this Trofie pasta for Halloween..
Summary
Achievability: 4 out of 5
Usability: 4 out of 5 Recipes are sectioned off by pasta type
Degree of difficulty: Easy, particularly if you buy the pasta but homemade isn’t as hard as it may seem
Food porn score: 3 out of 5
Post it note tabbed recipes: 15
Gift book: Pasta lovers will adore this but it is also good for people who want quick meals as well as some slow cooking.
So tell me Dear Reader, which pasta shape is your favourite? I heart papardelle and spaghetti, what are yours?
And if you need any more Pink inspiration, check out these other past NQN recipes!
Strawberry St Honore, Poodle Cookies, Strawberry & Pink Peppercorn Macarons, Coconut Ice Ice Cream, Taramasalata Dip, Ispahan Cupcake and Sour Cream & Rose Mini Cakes.
The Silver Spoon Pasta is published by Phaidon Books and retails for $59.95.
I was recently sent a copy of “I Know How To Cook” to review. For those of us that grew up outside of France and or without French relatives or parents, you may have a fleeting familiarity with the book itself but if you happen to be French or grew up with French relatives or parents, chances are you have a dog eared, well worn copy of Je Sais Cuisiner in it’s original French on your bookshelf with generations of French thumbs leafing through the book . Now for the time ever since it’s original publication in 1932, it has been translated into English by no other than food blogger Clotilde Desoulier from Chocolate and Zucchini.
The author, Ginette Mathiot (who has now passed) was a recipient of the French Legion of Honour and published more than 30 books but Je Sais Cuisiner is said to be her Magnum Opus. Certainly it’s reference book thick with an unusual dust jacket with thick unglossed paper and a cartoon drawing on the front and it is filled with 1,400 recipes. The first comparison I can think to make is with Stephanie Alexander’s Cook’s Companion or The Silver Spoon in terms of breadth of recipes and size. The book was said to be originally designed with a young bride in mind so she could learn to cook the basics.
The food is every day French cooking that covers everything you could think of from the basics, terminology and an extensive section on the many French sauces (the building blocks for French cuisine) as well as each of the different types of meat including game, soups and it breaks desserts down into fruit, milk and egg products, ices, cakes and pastries as well as sweets and preserves. All of the Classic French dishes are there and opening to any page and will probably have you pegging it with a post it note. The ones that I’ve most urgently post it noted were: gougeres, fromage blanc and sultana tart, lobster thermidor, Duck terrine with prunes, Coq au Vin, Eggs in Snow, fruit bavarois, pithiviers, honey nougat and pastilles. Photos appear in blocks rather than accompanying the recipes themselves which can make for some extra flicking through and they are clear, portrait, top down photos. There aren’t a huge amount of photos and what there are are mouth watering yet achievable.
I recall interviewing Justine Schofield from Masterchef and how she spoke of her mum’s amazing Blanquette de Veau and seeing a recipe for it in here prompted me to Post It Note it. It’s pure comfort food and given we’re moving out of Comfort Food season (i.e. Winter) I wasn’t sure if I should make it but a cold, windy spell in Sydney after some bizarre weather (red dust anyone?) convinced me otherwise.
There is only one thing I would say is a shortcoming of this book and it’s accessibility to some of these ingredients which tends to happen with overseas books. I find that when I get a Nigella book I find it nearly impossible to find Elderflower cordial and gooseberries and other things that she cooks with but of course she’s British so that’s what they have available (and I’m sure some of my readers would scratch their heads at getting lemon myrtle and other Australian items). Some of the ingredients are specialty shop items and things you may need to put in a special order for but there are also plenty of simple dishes to make so it’s an achievable book. For the Osso Bucco, I rang around last minute to Victor Churchill who are the most likely to have the shoulder of veal but they were out of it but suggested using an Osso Bucco cut and cutting away the bone which I did.
The Blanquette de Veau is essentially a creamy veal stew made with a roux base rather than a cream sauce. The veal was lovely and tender and the sauce creamy and rich. I brought it to the Forensic Eating Dinner Party and everyone seemed to like it although by the time it hit the table much of the sauce had evaporated so serving this as soon as it’s done with some rice is the best way to eat it. And the best part of using the Osso Bucco cut was having the marrow bones and sucking the soft marrow out of them slowly and with a long drawn out unhurriedness. Would I make it again? Absolutely and I’d do it with marrow bones.
It’s a superb book to learn French bistro cooking (6 million copies sold can attest to that) and if your little one has been inspired after watching Masterchef, some of the recipes are simple enough for them to do (under supervision of course) and who knows, perhaps you’ll grow your own Masterchef.
Summary:
Achievability: 3.5 out of 5 (as it’s not Haute Cuisine, it’s home cooking)
Usability: 4.5 out of 5 (very simple and clear instructions)
Degree of difficulty: Medium but mainly with sourcing some of the ingredients
Food porn score: 3 out of 5 (I wish there were more photos)
Post it note tabbed recipes: 22
Gift book: Yes for Francophiles who will love the fact that it has finally been translated into English. Plus it’s huge and size can count as far as presents go.
So tell me Dear Reader, what is your favourite French dish?
And Wallpaper Wednesday is back! Today we have for you a Pumpkin Cheesecake just in time for Halloween coming up!
And check out my mention in C!ao Magazine 
How very exciting!
I Know How To Cook is published by Phaidon $69.95.
Getting a review copy of Bill Granger’s Feed Me Now is an exciting moment indeed. Exciting because like many Sydneysiders, I have grown up eating Bill’s hotcakes and scrambled eggs and watched him grow from a single cafe in Darlinghurst to a TV chef with an International presence and several eateries (including one in Japan). And somehow we all still look at him as the man who gave us buttery scrambled eggs and fluffy ricotta hotcakes with honeycomb butter.
The book with a picture of the smiling Granger on the cover is a attractive looking tome indeed and lushly styled in that rustic home style with colour saturated pictures, longingly pretty produce and fantastic crockery and wares. It’s slightly less “Sydney” looking i.e. less beachy and waterfront looking which probably speaks to his new international status. It’s split up into nine sections, each to cover each possible circumstance from “Rise & Shine ” i.e. breakfast – what he is most well known for – to “Dinner Dash” i.e. fast dinner meals to the clever “Freeze Me” with soups, stews, pies and pastas and “Friends Over” which features a main and 2 sides for each menu and the timely “On A Shoestring” which speaks to the GFC that currently affects the world.
Beef Pot Pie
In the same way that Nigella Express speaks to time poor people, Feed Me Now also speaks to them in a slightly gentler and less ferociously fast pace. Here there aren’t a lot of tinned shortcuts – the emphasis is still on freshly cooked foods made from scratch, but as Bill is known for his simple, tasty home cooking, this continues in that vein. There’s certainly nothing like Spun Toffee or Pressed Duck in here – the most difficult looking and impressive looking thing is the Tiramisu Ice Cream Cake.
To some, and probably the ones that like to spin toffee, they may find that the recipes err on the side of simple (for example the avocado, prawn and fennel open sandwich) and for accomplished cooks, they will probably seek inspiration in other more complicated books but even for some like me that cooks a lot, there are some fabulous sounding ideas where he puts a twist on the regular version e.g. quesadillas with black beans and green tomato salsa or apple fruit cake and a lot of “Why didn’t I think of that?” moments.
Tiramisu Ice Cream Cake
My favourite chapter of any cookbook is the dessert one and here it’s called “Sweet Dreams”. It is a relatively short chapter but the silky caramel custard with cinnamon begs to be made (although there is no picture of this) as well as the Tiramisu Ice Cream cake which has the added bonus of being frightfully easy to do.
As for the usual test of how appealing a cookbook is, i.e. the number of post it flags stuck onto recipe pages, I counted at least 10 in mine from the Japanese fried chicken, spiced chicken dumpling soup, roast chicken curry, sticky five spice ribs to many more.
The first recipe that caught my eye was the Pumpkin Cannelloni, because I just happen to love pumpkin and I know my husband adores cannelloni. It’s delicious and fairly easy to put together. When I make this again (and I will) I would add feta to balance out the sweetness of the pumpkin as it can come across as a little too sweet without it. I would also sprinkle some water over the pasta before adding the bechamel just to ensure that the pasta becomes suitably tender as there is no tomato sauce baked onto the pasta. It is delicious though and 2-3 cannelloni tubes with a side salad can easily become a weeknight dinner over the course for a several days if there are just the two of you.
And for Bill Granger fans, stay tuned! I have a surprise for you coming up soon 
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