I keep gazing at my shelves of cookbooks, looking for inspiration. Not for recipe ideas, but for titles. My next book is inthe pipeline, and discussions have already begun as to what to call it. It's tough, this naming process: there are so many good titles out there, and you're desperate to come up with something original for your own.
Even so, precedent shouldn't be the only guide, as the success of The Geometry Of Pasta (Boxtree, £16.99) shows. The book's author, Jacob Kenedy, chef/owner of Bocca di Lupo in London, and graphic designer, Caz Hildebrand, were no doubt warned thata cookbook with "geometry" in its title was never going to fly, especially coupled with their decision to eschew colour photography in favour of pared-down black-and-white images of pasta shapes. But the result is astunner of a book: stylish, original, informative and very successful. Crucially, the title is also apt, because the book is based around the equation that the perfect shape + the perfect sauce = the geometry of pasta. While the uninitiated might think it's fine to pair penne with, say, a vongole sauce, or spaghetti with carbonara, Kenedy and Hildebrand highlight the scientific seriousness of their subject.
That's why I use their book, and afew other old favourites, for my basic pasta rules. Namely: the more swirls, twirls, ridges, twists, holes and tubes a pasta has, the chunkier and thicker the sauce that goes with it should be. Smooth, long, thin ribbons of spaghetti or linguine, on the other hand, require a simple, light sauce of grated cheese and cream, or an oil-based sauce such as vongole. Tubular penne, corkscrew-shaped fusilli, wavy reginette, shell-like conchiglie and twisted casarecce, meanwhile, love to act as vessels, scooping up in their nooks and crannies peas, chickpeas, broad beans, pine nuts or raisins, as they travel from plate to mouth.
Fresh and dried pasta are very different beasts, too. The advantage of making your own is that you can play around with the ratio of egg to flour in the dough, and how much semolina flour you add. It's the "00" flour that gives fresh pasta its silky texture, but it's the semolina that gives it bite and helps the sauce stick. Fresh egg pasta is traditionally served in the north of Italy with butter, cream and rich meat sauces, whereas dried pasta is more at home with the tomato- and olive oil-based ones of the south.
When it comes to cooking pasta, the first essential is to make sure you have a big enough pot: it needs room to roll in the water while cooking. As for salting, I follow Anna del Conte's rather wonderful advice that the water should be "as salty as the Mediterranean sea": 5-10g of salt per litre of water is my general rule.
And always drain the pasta when it is marginally undercooked – it will continue to cook once it has been drained – and always save some of the cooking water: it's often a useful addition to the sauce, to loosen it and help it adhere to the pasta.
Quantity-wise, 100-150g of dried pasta is about right per portion as amain course, though I have been known to wolf down half a 500g packet in a matter of minutes.
Tagliolini with walnuts and lemon
Tagliatelle comes from the word tagliare, meaning "to cut". Tagliolini are simply thinly cut tagliatelle. Either will work here. Serves two.
60g walnuts, roughly broken up
30g unsalted butter
10g sage leaves, finely shredded
Grated zest of 1 medium lemon
3 tbsp double cream
Salt and black pepper
300g tagliolini
50g parmesan, shaved
15g parsley, chopped
2 tbsp lemon juice
Heat the oven to 140C/285F/gas mark1. Spread the walnuts out on abaking tray, roast for 15 minutes, remove and set aside to cool.
Put a medium sauté pan on a high heat and add the butter. Cook for aminute, add the sage and fry for two minutes, until the butter starts to brown. Add the lemon zest, cream, half a teaspoon of salt and plenty ofblack pepper, stir and cook for just afew seconds, to thicken alittle. Remove from the heat, so thecream doesn't split, and set aside.
Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil, add the pasta and cook until al dente. Drain, reserve a few tablespoons of the cooking liquid, and put the pasta in a large bowl.
Warm the sauce through, adding some of the reserved cooking liquid if it has gone very thick, then pour over the pasta. Add the walnuts, parmesan and parsley, stir in the lemon juice and serve at once.
Gigli with chickpeas and za'atar
The wavy edges of gigli ("lilies") are a great vehicle for the chickpeas and anchovies in this sauce; orecchiette ("ears") and conchiglie ("shells") are good alternatives. Serves four.
90ml olive oil
2 onions, peeled and chopped
2 tsp ground cumin
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
3 long shaved strips of lemon skin
2 tsp chopped rosemary
2 tbsp chopped thyme
1 tbsp chopped sage
2 400g cans chickpeas, drained
1½ tbsp finely chopped anchovies
300ml chicken stock
2 tbsp lemon juice
Salt and black pepper
400g gigli
20g chopped parsley
20g chopped mint
1 tbsp za'atar
Put a large sauté pan on a high heat, add two tablespoons of the oil, then add the onion and cumin and fry for eight minutes, until caramelised and soft. Add the garlic, lemon peel, rosemary, thyme and sage, cook for two minutes more, then add the chickpeas, anchovies, stock, lemon juice, a teaspoon of salt and some black pepper. Bring to a boil and cook for three minutes, so the liquid thickens; mash some of the chickpeas into the sauce to help it along.
Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil, add the gigli and cook for eight minutes, until al dente. Drain, transfer to a bowl and mix with two tablespoons of oil.
Divide the pasta between four plates. Fold the parsley and mint into the sauce and spoon over the pasta. Sprinkle za'atar on top, add a final dribble of oil, and serve at once.
