dipping into...

Today I'm dipping into Carmela Sophia Sereno's 'Southern Italian Family Cooking' after watching the rather attractive cookery writer at talk last night.  She spoke about her passion for 'cucina povera'; great food made with inexpensive simple ingredients and seasonal produce.

She was very entertaining and some of the chaps were rather wowed by her striking appearance.

Carmela is on the left with the lovely Helen from Forum books who organised the event.

Carmela's recipe book stands out from the current trend in cookery books in several ways.  The first edition book is a paperback and is the size of a novel.  There are no photographs (not through choice Carmela said) but there are a few illustrations.  Each recipe is contained on one page - or on a double page spread, so no having to try to turn pages over in the middle of a recipe.  At the end of most of the recipes Carmela has added a helpful tip, and she has also added a list of essential Italian store cupboard ingredients just before the recipe index.

Carmela is very passionate about pasta so I checked out what I had that might match her essential ingredients list.  I had; fusilli, lasagne sheets, orzo, and spaghetti.  So out of my list only one of the pastas matched up with Carmela's choice...spaghetti, bucatini, ditalini, penne, troife, rigatoni, pastini.

As pasta is often fairly easily interchangable in recipes I'll not be too distressed by my pasta choices!