Pasta Improv

Do you, like millions of Americans, love pasta? Do you nonetheless find yourself preparing the same old pasta sauces over and over again? Wouldn't you like to be able to spice up your pasta routine, to use fresh new ingredients and discover new methods and flavor combinations? With the help of Erica De Mane's timely and imaginative book, you'll learn to throw together an impromptu and delicious pasta dish the way the Italians do, creatively making use of whatever's on hand or whatever looks good in the market. You will develop the confidence and creativity in the kitchen to approach and cook pasta the way it's done in Italy.

Do you, like millions of Americans, love pasta? Do you nonetheless find yourself preparing the same old pasta sauces over and over again? Wouldn't you like to be able to spice up your pasta routine, to use fresh new ingredients and discover new methods and flavor combinations? Now, with the help of Erica De Mane's timely and imaginative book, you can. You'll learn to throw together an impromptu and delicious pasta dish the way the Italians do, creatively making use of whatever's on hand or whatever looks good in the market. You will develop the confidence and creativity in the kitchen to approach and cook pasta the way it's done in Italy. Erica De Mane emphasizes pasta's enormous versatility and shows you how to think for yourself when it comes to combining ingredients. She explains the basic cooking techniques, sauces, and essential equipment so that you can move beyond the boundaries of recipes and conventional approaches to pasta cooking. She teaches you how to break down recipes and reinvent them, progressing from the fundamental to the complex, and how to customize recipes to suit your whim or your pantry—so you'll always end up with an exciting, flavorful, and absolutely authentic Italian dish. Drawing on her extensive travels through the southern regions of Sicily, Apulia, and Campania, and on her respect for the innovations of American chefs, Erica De Mane provides a wealth of new ideas—from Cavatelli with Morels, Montasio, and Arugula to Ravioli with Scallop Mousse and Red Pepper Sauce to Veal and Roasted Artichokes Lasagne—that make an easy transition to the American kitchen. If you're tired of slavishly following recipes all the time, or hesitant to include a favorite ingredient unless it's explicitly called for, fear no more. The clearly laid out recipe ideas and blueprints for creative pasta-making in this book are what every free-spirited pasta lover interested in taste and authenticity has been waiting for. Among Pasta Improvvisata's unique features: —Three superbly organized sections: Pasta and Vegetables, Pasta and Fish, and Pasta and Meat —Twelve instructive pages of drawings, showing all the different types of pasta —A list of recommended sources for all sorts of Italian specialty ingredients —A chapter on making fresh pasta, including unusual variations such as Red Pepper Pasta, Saffron Pasta, and Fennel Seed Pasta This all-inclusive, intelligent, and approachable cookbook will enable all pasta lovers, the novice and the experienced home cook alike, to have more fun—and freedom—in the kitchen than ever before.

I became infatuated with cooking as a teenager, drawing inspiration from my Southern Italian–American family’s kitchen. I began turning out inappropriately large quantities of eggplant Parmigiano, calzones, Christmas cookies, anchovy foccacia, sometimes, to the mystification of my parents, at three or four in the morning. After a brief stint in journalism school and a chunk of time attempting to become a great American playwright (the one play I had produced was a comedy about cooking), I returned to my first and true love and began cooking at restaurants, including Le Madri and Florent in Manhattan, and attending the New York Restaurant School. With the itch to write still brewing and my muscles aching from working the line, I eventually began selling articles on Italian cooking, first to Food & Wine magazine and then to The New York Times, Gourmet, Fine Cooking, and other publications. I also wrote a monthly food column for Marie Claire magazine. I continued to share my love of Italian cooking with my first book, Pasta Improvvisata, which was published by Scribner in 1999 and was singled out for praise by The New York Times in its twice-yearly cookbook roundup. That was followed by Pasta, for Williams-Sonoma, and The Flavors of Southern Italy, published by John Wiley & Sons in 2005, which was chosen by both Publishers Weekly and Food & Wine as one of the best cookbooks of the year. I also contributed many Italian food recipes to a new edition of The Joy of Cooking and to a number of Food & Wine publications. I’m currently working on a cooking memoir and a collection of essays on Italian flavor combinations, as well as writing on the Mediterranean diet for Diane, the online magazine for Curves Fitness. I also contribute a monthly piece on Feast Day recipes to www.novena.com. My blog at www.ericademane.com contains hundreds of recipes, essays on my cooking philosophy, reviews of my books, and artwork. A recent focus is “Lost Recipes Found,” where I do detective work for readers who want to bring old Italian family recipes back into their lives, or to recreate great dishes they remember eating in Italy. It’s been very popular. I also give private and group cooking classes on Southern Italian cooking and the Mediterranean diet. I’ve appeared on Food Talk with Arthur Schwartz on WOR radio, on the TV Food Network, on Bloomberg Radio’s Dining with Peter Elliot, on The Heritage Food Radio, and on many nationwide and local radio and TV shows. I’ve given cooking demonstrations at numerous gourmet shops, bookstores, farmers’ markets, and culinary events, including De Gustibus and The New York Times Style magazine’s “Taste of T.” I’m a longstanding member of the Italian-based Slow Food movement, the American Academy of Rome Kitchen Cabinet, and the International Association of Culinary Professionals. I live in Manhattan.