This week’s pasta is a little something special that we put together for Mutti. Simple but delicious cavatelli, served in a quick sugo, and topped with fresh ricotta salata, pine nuts, and lemon zest. For when you’re in a hurry, but still want to impress!

Spinach and ricotta was really my Nonna’s trademark pasta filling, stuffed generously into huge batches of ravioli and cannelloni. With a little Romano cheese, maybe some minced garlic, egg to bind it all, and salt and pepper. Simple perfection, and to this day my favourite filling. Well, this week, we’re turning things inside out.

Pasta, for me, has always been more about an approach to food than a favourite dish. Don’t get me wrong, we make and enjoy it at least once a week, and it is a passion bordering on obsession, but tacos truly vie for my heart. Or my stomach, as it may be. It was only a matter of time before we quite literally stuffed some Mexican into our pasta.

Though perhaps a little late in life, and unhelpfully complicated by life’s realities, if I could choose someone to be when I grow up, without a doubt I’d be Inspector Montalbano. Aside from pleasantly relatable traits, such as his warranted, weary grouchiness and exaggerated hand gestures, Montalbano is a man who pays food the respect that it deserves.

A couple of weeks back I was enjoying a good glass of Montepulciano with a light pork ragu and a side of charred radicchio. How far I’ve come from Fruity Lexia and chip rolls. Anyway, I’d paired it so uncharacteristically well that it occurred to me I should probably stick it all into some sort of tortelli. And so this weekend’s pasta turned out to be a little ode to wine, pairing the dish to the vino, rather than the other way around. This is our pork and radicchio tortelli, made with a red wine dough, and served simply with smashed garlic fried in olive oil.

I’m not going to say that we ran out of fresh ingredients due to poorly-timed lockdown grocery deliveries, but if that had hypothetically happened, this would have been the perfect pasta solution. This week’s cappelletti is made with a fennel seed dough, and a simple, comforting filling of roasted potato and fennel. We served them up with crispy potato skins, a delicious agrumato, and a scattering of crushed pink peppercorns. Sometimes it takes a pantry emergency to remind you that the simple food is often the best!

We’ve been making all kinds of creative pasta lately, with unusual ingredient lists, playful dough colourings, and fiddly shapes. Well, this week we’re going back to basics, and cooking up a crowd-pleasing carbonara. To add a little Pasta et Al spin, we’ve made our tonnarelli with half rye flour, and smoked it briefly before tossing it through the sauce. It’s a creamy, cheesy, smoky smile-bringer.

Selamat pagi para pemasak dan para pecinta makanan! This week we’ve crafted something extra special and delightfully different, a fusion of cuisines that is particularly close to my heart. And is quite possibly one of the tastiest things that I’ve ever cooked! My roots might be in Italy, and my home in Australia, but Indonesia is where I really grew into myself. So I’m very excited to present our latest creation: fagottini made with cassava leaf dough and cooked as potstickers, filled with slow-cooked beef rendang, and served with green sambal, chilli eggplant, and toasted coconut.

Ah, rigatoni. For all of the incredible shapes and fillings out there, all of the carefully handcrafted pasta that we obsess over, there’s just something indescribably special about these chewy, ridged, extruded tubes. Even as a kid, I remember secretly hanging out for the dried supermarket rigatoni, despite always having a freezer full of fresh pasta. A big bowl of rigatoni with thick tomato sauce and a huge mound of grated cheese can fix just about anything.

Back before parenthood and pandemic, when we were able to fly around the world, or jump in the car on a whim and just drive, I’d get to the ocean as often as I could. For a while there I was diving almost every weekend, and became quicker at jumping into a wetsuit and slinging on a tank than pulling on my socks and shoes.