Fabulous Reads: Cooking with pasta-bilities

Pasta Grannies: Comfort Cooking: Traditional Family Recipes from Italy’s Best Home Cooks, Vicky Bennison, Jonathan Ball Publishers, ISBN: 9781784885243

INSPIRED by a YouTube channel with the same name, Pasta Grannies is a beautiful cookbook chock full of delicious traditional recipes.

Readers are given the basic building blocks to help them prepare pasta from scratch. What was unique about this book is that it is as much about the people and history of Italy as the food.

Each recipe is taught by a different granny – or nonna – as one would say in Italian. The reader is given a little introduction to the nonna and where she’s from. We are also given some interesting facts about the dish or a unique ingredient.

Each recipe is also available on the YouTube channel, and one can easily find them by scanning the corresponding QR code.

There are recipes for vegetarians, as well as seafood or meat lovers. Readers are also spoiled with a sprinkling of traditional pizza, pie and pastry recipes.

The layout is very concise and complemented by beautifully wholesome photos of the nonne in action or of their completed dishes.

For those, like myself, who have never made pasta from scratch, the recipes may be a little challenging. Especially since a number of the nonne have worked in restaurants for a number of years. It’s definitely not a book for anyone looking for easy, quick recipes.

However, it is the perfect gift for anyone who loves pasta, Italian food and/or cooking in general. This is the second volume in the series, preceded by Pasta Grannies: The Official Cookbook: The Secrets of Italy’s Best Home Cooks. Mariclair Smit – 4/5 stars

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