Working on our book over this last year or so, I’ve focused on pairing more complicated pasta with simpler sauces, and vice versa. It just allows you to save a little time on one element, and use that to create something special with another.

So the dough and pasta is the focus here, although the confit purée is deceptively impressive for its simplicity – you certainly don’t have to sacrifice flavour to save time! This is our Striped Ricotta Fagottini with Garlic and Fennel Confit Purée.

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.

Some Sundays I wake up and know exactly what type of pasta I want to make. Other times it takes a strong coffee and a rummage through the fridge. This weekend though my inspiration had run dry. Life’s been busy and days have been long. I’ve just been trying to get up that great big hill of hope for a destination. It’s time for a little healing nostalgia. This week we’re serving up 90s print triangoli.

We couldn’t let Valentine’s Day coincide with pasta day without creating something a bit special for our favourite person. My long-suffering better half, little Al’s lovely Ma, is the genius cake-extraordinaire behind Forty-Two Cakes. So as a little tribute to her, we’ve taken cake flavours and turned them into pasta!

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.

If you want to light a fire in the pasta world, just ask someone what these little guys are called. Even the ravioli versus tortelli debate is easier to settle than this one. Manti, fagottini, ravioli, cofanetti, lanterne. Whatever you want to call them, they look great, taste fantastic, and are one of the easiest filled pastas to make.

Little Al has managed to inherit a few of my more ‘difficult’ personality traits, but so far there’s been no sign of the calculated, scheming mischief that defined my own childhood. The prime stone against which I honed my blade of torment was my nonna. She did have pleasant diminutive nicknames for me, but my given names may as well have been ‘delinguente’ and ‘scustamato’ for their frequency and familiarity.