We had to do it. We had to make a festive season pasta. This week’s two-tone fusilli combines tomato and spinach doughs into hand-rolled twisty goodness. Served in a light nduja-spiced sauce, with crispy basil and sage leaves and cherry bocconcini, what better way to celebrate the closing out of the year? Pignolata, that’s how! To finish our dish we’ve prepared these usually sweet Christmas treats as savoury gold-coated baubles, and used them to dress our tinsel-like pasta. Because ‘tis the season.

This week we’re throwing back to the 80s! This spinach and ricotta rotolo was something that my Mum used to cook up for special occasions, back when béchamel was big. Or so I’m told. I was more a concept than a thing at the time, and I’m not sure that béchamel ever actually went out of fashion anyway, so take that as you will.

Sometimes we cook up the classics, other times we think: what would you get if you made sea anemones out of pasta, plated them into a rockpool, and made that rockpool out of margaritas? This week’s pasta is lime and tequila prawn sacchettoni, made with blue spirulina dough, and served in citrus salt enclosed pools of juniper-olive oil, dehydrated blood orange and lime, pippies, and fresh seaweed.

This week we mixed a little nostalgia into our pasta: figs, anisette, and the lolly bowl. One of the most enduring memories that I have of my Nonna’s house is actually my Nonno’s liqueur cabinet, filled with mysterious and intricate glassware, and the intoxicating smell of anisette. Always competing for my fickle loyalty was my great aunty, who would keep a box of those rectangular Italian lollies at the ready to bribe us with. And my mum loves figs!

Little Al and I were playing around with cookie cutters, making a lot of mess and noise, when we came up with this week’s shape. It’s kind of close to funghini pasta, so that’s what we’re calling it. We wanted to pair it with a rich, spicy arrabbiata sauce, and this shape allowed us to work in some two-tone laminated goodness of spinach and paprika doughs: one flavour to contrast with the sugo and one to complement. These fun guys were the result.

One of my favourite childhood dishes, that my Mum still makes when I visit, is peperonata. Ours was simply capsicums and potatoes, roasted with breadcrumbs and a good hit of olive oil: a magic combination. I’d always though that it would be fun to capture these flavours in pasta, but had never quite settled on how to do it. Do you focus on the potato or the capsicum? And then, suddenly, I remembered doppio ravioli. Perché non entrambi?

We’re regularly asked about gluten-free pasta, and to be honest the only reason that we haven’t blogged about it yet is that it feels a little too simple to put on a recipe card. Which of course is no reason at all. So this week, please accept our apologies for not posting it sooner, and enjoy our recipe for gluten-free reginette.

Pici are the answer to all of your thick, chewy pasta cravings. They’re sort an Italian equivalent to chunky hand cut rice noodles. We usually make them with just bread flour and water, but this week we’ve taken it up a notch by swapping out the water for red wine. We served them up with a chunky sauce of crispy sausage meat, fried chunks of bread, and wilted greens, for a satisfying dish loaded with texture and flavour.

This week we wanted to bring you a filled pasta dish that you can knock up in less than an hour; something packed with fresh flavour, and accompanied by a sauce that you can make without a single pot or pan. These simple pansotti, filled with rainbow chard, radicchio, mustard greens, marjoram, and ricotta are what we came up with. They’re served with a delicious walnut sauce that’s made entirely with a stick blender!

Last week we tried to escape the mists and frosts of winter with a little touch of the seaside, but this week we’re embracing it. Or at least trudging on, bolstered by a hearty bowl of chewy wholemeal spelt gemelli. Their twisty texture and earthy flavour makes for a fortifying plate of pasta, whether it’s stirred through a hearty ragu, or tossed with a bit of butter and pepper.