Italian pasta recipes can get creative and while it might seem like a strange combination to some, there is more than one example in Italy of pasta and potato served together. As summer in Italy approaches and we’re in a heat wave right now, pasta is still a great dish to serve as long as you keep it light. This fresh, summer feeling and experimental dish uses the traditional Italian product of pesto sauce, with linguine and potatoes.

For four people, you’ll need: 300 gr of linguine, 300 gr of broad beans, 300 gr of potatoes, one large bunch of basil, one bunch of rocket lettuce, two tablespoons of pistachio nuts, one clove of garlic, four tablespoons of grated pecorino cheese, extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper.

Wash and clean the rocket and basil, peel the garlic clobe and put it through a food processor with the pistachios and some salt and pepper. Add the basil and rocket and mix again. Blanche the broad beans slightly in some boiling salty water and take off the skin. Peel and chop the potatoes and boil for ten minutes. Boil the linguine pasta with the broad beans in some water, drain but keep the water aside.

Toss the pesto sauce through the pasta and add some of the water if it’s too dry. As a last flourish, add the pecorino cheese and serve. This would do with a nice bottle of Italian white wine, possibly from the Liguria region as this regional cuisine is home to the pesto sauce.

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If you are on a diet, this delicious pasta recipe is not for you, but it’s so delicious that if I were you, I would give it a try it all the same. But remember the fish must be absolutely fresh and if you can, use fregole instead of spaghetti. I don’t know if you are acquainted with it, but fregole is an exquisite variety of pasta from Sardinia; made from semolina flour, it looks (and taste) a little bit like Couscous. Here are the ingredients:

400 g fregole; eggs; onions;; hammer fish fillet; dry tomatoes; prawns; mussels; pecorino cheese; parsley; marjoram; vegetable stock; lemon zest; oil and butter.

Preparation: in a large pan melt the butter and brown the chopped onions; then throw in the hammer fish cubes and add the oil. Cook for a couple of minutes and then stir in fregole. Next add the chopped dry tomatoes and gradually pour in the vegetable stock (keep stirring the mixture) In the meanwhile cook the mussels until the shells open. When they are done, add the chopped prawns. Next cook the eggs in a bain-marie, throw them in and then sprinkle with marjoram. Stir in the pasta and add pecorino cheese and lemon zest. Bon apppetit .

This recipe serves four.

The shape of pasta is not just a random thing that you can throw any sauce at. On the contrary, Italian cooking has known for centuries which are the best sauces to match to certain pasta shapes, and which shapes can create specific sensations in the mouth.

The same publishing house as Nigella Lawson’s books, called Here, has produced the Italian cookbook in English: The Geometry of Pasta. Including recipes from chef Jacob Kenedy, the great little video above is a super-quick Italian pasta recipe on how to do farfalle with cream and prosciutto. For more information see the Heredesign website.

Fed up with complicated recipes which never work out the way one wanted? If so try this quick and easy Italian recipe for pasta with porcini and zucchini; it won’t have you slaving in the kitchen for hours!

Ingredients: 350 g pasta; 5 zucchini; 1 garlic clove; mint leaves; 200 g porcini.

Preparation: chop the zucchini finely and then place in a frying pan with oil, garlic and mint leaves. Cook for a few minutes and then add the chopped porcini. In the meanwhile cook the pasta in slightly salted water until dente, drain and immediately stir into the hot frying pan! Sprinkle with pepper and serve.

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With temperatures now on the rise, one needs something light to eat ( without having to give up on taste and switch to salads) so here‘s delicious pasta recipe which will make your mouth water!

Ingredients: 400 g pasta (a short variety of it); 10 small fresh tomatoes; 10 dried tomatoes; chopped parsley; 1 cup vegetable stock; extra virgin oil; 1 garlic clove; white pepper; basil.

Preparation: Cook the pasta in slightly salted water. In the meanwhile in a baking dish place half of the chopped fresh tomatoes and half of the dried ones. Add the chopped parsley, basil leaves, white pepper and oil. Stir in the pasta and top with the left tomatoes. Add stock, Parmesan cheese and bake for a few minutes (until the cheese has melted). Next remove from the oven and leave to cool. This recipe serves 4!

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This Italian recipe for rigatoni pasta with sausage and artichokes is delicious and easy to prepare. Here’s what you need:

350 g rigatoni; 120 g ricotta; ½ cup milk; 200 g artichokes; 2 sausages; 1 glass of white wine; 1 garlic clove; extra virgin oil; salt.

In a bowl mix milk and ricotta and beat them until soft and creamy. In the meanwhile place the chopped the sausage in a little oil, add the white wine and cook for a few minutes. Next put the chopped artichokes in a pan, add the garlic and a glass of water and cook until it has evaporated. Pour the milk and ricotta in another pan, throw in the chopped artichokes and sausage and then stir in the cooked rigatoni. Stir for a few minutes and serve.

Photo | E. Michael Smith Chiefio

Today is international “Tagliatelle Day” when the world celebrates one of Italy’s greatest types of pasta. Around the world, more than 1000 Italian chefs will make original pasta recipes based on the traditional Italian dish from Bologna, of “tagliatelle al ragù”. Normally known as Bolognese sauce in English, ragù is the traditional name of the mince sauce that we all enjoy, most traditionally prepared with tagliatelle and not spaghetti.

Part of the purpose behind the Tagliatelle Day is to educate the public about the bastardisation of Italian products around the world, and the ignoble attempts at copying Italian cuisine. And our ignorance contributes to the use of products that are not traditionally Italian, and that do not follow the strict health and cultural production guidelines.

The idea came from the GVCI, or Gruppo Virtuale Cuochi Italiani, which is an online group of Italian chefs founded back in 2001, which includes 1,000 professional chefs from 70 countries around the world.

A classic Italian seafood recipe appearing as a pasta dish, is “spaghetti alle vongole”, and today we try another version of “vongole”, or clams, but with chilli. It’s an easy recipe to make and is fantastic for summer evenings. It puts me in mind of more than one summer holiday in Italy.

For two people you’ll need: 200 grams of spaghetti, a little olive oil, the seeds of two chillis, a tablespoon of pesto sauce, as many clams as you want, one garlic clove, half a glass of white wine, a little parsley and some large grain salt.

Cook the pasta as you would normally, in plenty of salty water, and in the meantime make the sauce. In a large, non-stick pan, add some olive oil, the chopped garlic clove and the clams. Make sure the clams have been cleaned.

Toss and stir the sauce for a couple of minutes, then add the wine and allow it to evaporate. Add the pesto and the chilli seeds and mix well. Drain the pasta and toss it in the pan with the clam sauce. Dust with a little freshly chopped parsley and serve very hot. Buon appetito!

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The beauty of many pasta dishes is that you can get very creative with what is a traditional Italian recipe. If you want to experiment with something more elaborate, you can try this version of Italian seafood, of pasta with lobster or crayfish. It’s perfect for a special occasion where you can show off your culinary skills.

Ingredients required: a medium-sized lobster, 200 grams of spaghetti (for two people), plenty of parsley, half a glass of dry white wine, one spring onion, olive oil, pepper and salt. For advice on the amount of pasta to use, see our post on the cooking the perfect pasta dish.

This recipe uses the lobster not only for its flavour, but also its decorative qualities on the plate. You can either use a fresh lobster, or a frozen one that has already been cooked so that all you need to do is re-heat it in boiling salty water. Cook the spaghetti in boiling water, and in the meantime chop up the spring onion and heat in a non-stick pan with the olive oil. Add the wine and allow it to evaporate. Cut the lobster exactly in half, leaving the flesh in the shell.

Place the lobster in the pan with the other ingredients to heat it for another couple of minutes Remove the lobster from the pan, drain the spaghetti and then place it in the pan, tossing well with the other ingredients and adding some pepper and parsley. Serve the spaghetti, placing the lobster on top. This tasty dish should be served quite hot.

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If you want to stun your guests with traditional Italian homemade pasta for a New Year’s Eve Italian dinner, try our recipe below. The easiest way to make pasta at home is if you have a pasta machine, but if you want to make ravioli or even tagliatelle, you can do it by hand.

Ingredients: one egg per 100 grams of flour, and calculate one and a half eggs per person. So, for example, for two people, you’ll need 300 grams of flour and three eggs. Have a large workspace ready, make a little mound with the flour and create a crater in the middle.

Crack the eggs into the crater and knead the pasta by hand. If the mixture is not easy enough to work, you can add some water for a softer dough. After kneading for a consistent texture, cool in the fridge for about half an hour. After cooling, roll out the dough to a thickness of a couple of millimetres.

At this point, you can either cut the dough into strips to make tagliatelle (or fettuccine), or you can use the wet edge of a glass to cut circles for ravioli. Freshly made pasta should be cooked and eaten fresh, and it needs to be cooked rapidly in salted boiling water, only for a couple of minutes.

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