HOW TO MAKE AUTHENTIC ITALIAN PASTA AT HOME | PASTA EVANGELISTS RECIPES

The idea is simple; you select your recipes from the week’s menu, and they’re delivered straight to your door. You can select a single or double portion, depending on the number of people you’re cooking for. Each box contains fresh pasta, sauces and garnishes in insulated packaging, alongside ice packs. They even offer vegan and gluten free options. No problem if you’re not home for delivery either: your food will stay cool and fresh until you’re back. You can even surprise a fellow foodie friend or family member with a Pasta Evangelists gift card, subscription or pasta making kit.

When it comes to ingredients, making pasta is actually incredibly straightforward. All you need is flour, eggs and perhaps a dash of salt. No additives or preservatives are necessary! If you’re vegan, you can still make authentically Italian pasta by replacing eggs with water. Want to impress your friends and family, or throw your very own Italian dinner party? This article from Pasta Evangelists outlines everything you need. So let’s get started!

‘Al dente’ literally means ‘to the tooth’. This refers to the texture of cooked pasta – to cook pasta till it is ‘al dente’ means to ensure your pasta still retains some bite, so it is still a little firm ‘to the tooth’. ‘Al dente’ pasta should be firm, but not crunchy.

This depends on the type of pasta! Egg pasta that is filled should be consumed straight away if it is homemade, though it can be frozen for up to 1 month. Simple egg pasta, once dried, can be left in the fridge for up to 48h, or frozen for up to 1 month. Pasta bianca (pasta made solely of flour and water) can be left outside to dry over 48h, and frozen for up to 1 month.

Absolutely! You can freeze both pasta dough and shaped pasta. For the former, wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and keep for up to 1 month. For shaped pasta, once your pasta is formed, allow the pasta to dry on a parchment-lined baking tray (up to an hour for fresh egg pasta, to a day for pasta bianca. Once dry enough to handle while retaining its shape, portion the pasta and place in freezer bags, before popping in your freezer. You can keep pasta this way for up to 1 month.

Anna Del Conte famously says that the water in which we cook our pasta ‘should be as salty as the Mediterranean Sea’. While the debate as to whether or not we need to add salt to our pasta water is ongoing, my family and I swear by it. Cooking pasta in generously salted water adds flavour to the pasta, which I think many people forget should be as important (if not more) than the sauce it is paired with. Just as you would season other elements of a meal, you should season your pasta – you’ll certainly notice this step in the final product!

In Italy, different regions are very proud of their culinary heritage. A lot of the history surrounding certain pasta shapes and sauces define the way they are served, to this day. For example, Bologna is home to both tagliatelle and ragù alla Bolognese, so in Italy, you’ll almost always find ragù alla Bolognese served with tagliatelle. It’s partly about honouring tradition, and partly about the way the pasta and sauce interact with each other. Tagliatelle, for instance, is great at capturing the rugged ragù, as its shape and length afford a larger surface area that comes in contact with the sauce. Spiral pasta like fusilli and casarecce are often served with pesto, as they capture the smaller morsels of sauce in their shallow grooves. We actually have a blog that helps you to match pastas with sauces – you can use this as a good guide! Find out more here.

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