The Modern Italian Cook by Joetrivelli
Editor Keith Kendrick embraces the world of homemade pasta
I was churning out sheets and ribbons of pasta, hanging them on washing lines around our flat
Why would anyone make their own pasta? There’s so much variety of both fresh and dried in the shops – not to mention the floury, eggy mess involved – that surely it’s a waste of time and energy to make it yourself? Well, indeed. I went through a pasta-making phase around five years ago when my wife bought me a machine for Christmas. I was a stay-at-home dad to my three kids at the time so approached it with gusto, churning out sheets and ribbons of pasta, noon and night, hanging them on hastily assembled washing lines around our cramped flat. The experience put us all off pasta to the extent that we now only eat it a couple of times a month.
The kids are older now, though, and I’m (slightly) wiser. It’s time to dust off the pasta machine and revisit a pastime I loved until I exhausted its pleasure. Enter Joe Trivelli, co-head chef at London’s River Café, and his marvellous book, The Modern Italian Cook. Like me, Joe is a dad who loves to cook for his kids, and his book is packed with familyfriendly recipes, from pork chops and pizza, to beans and bream. But it’s the pasta I’m here for. As Joe explains, ‘Pasta is Italian soul food. I don’t like to think of myself as a snob but I have no interest in eating bad, or even average, pasta. Like everyone else of my generation, however, this is what I was unwittingly brought up on. Raised on ubiquitous, massproduced and low-grade wheat and bread, I now look for better. Part of the reason I have made so much fresh pasta in the past is to have control over the materie prime, or primary ingredients.’ And it’s within that control that I rediscover the joy of what I obsessed over five years ago. There’s no greater feeling for a cook than to feel in control of your domain: the assembling of ingredients, the mixing, the shaping, the rolling, the cooking and the final – da-dah! – serving of your creation to a (hopefully) appreciative crowd. This is, of course, a cookbook challenge, but it felt more like a therapy session. A small word of consternation: the recipe calls for ‘semola’ flour, which I’d never heard of. Even Google searches kept delivering ‘semolina flour’ results. After consulting our food team at Good Food, I sourced some double-milled semolina flour from Gilchesters Organics (although our team said substituting ‘00’ flour for semola would have done the trick).