Review: Annabel Karmel’s Top 100 Pasta Dishes
As a family meal, pasta is incredibly popular because it is reasonably cheap to make and even the fussiest of pallets will pick out the bits they like.
Pasta is also great starting food for weaning babies, especially baby pasta shapes which are soft enough to encourage them to chew and swallow and can be mixed with fresh vegetables.
But it’s all to easy to become stuck in a pasta rut, preparing the same meal time after time.
That Annabel has managed to come up with just the ‘top’ hundred best recipes is amazing for parents who barely manage to struggle one or even two, but this fabulous book will really stimulate the imagination.
Just flicking through the pages of Annabel Karmel’s new book Top 100 Pasta Dishes is enough to make you feel hungry.
Annabel’s years of experience means she knows exactly how to season a recipe to appeal especially to fussy young eaters, whilst keeping it healthy and importantly, tasty.
‘You can’t go wrong with sausages and pasta,’ Annabel writes and she’s right. The beautifully illustrated Fusilli with Chipolatas and Sweet Pepper recipe will have you ditching the preprepared supermarket sauces.
Fancy something a bit spicier? Our Spicy Sausage Meatball Pasta is already well bookmarked.
The book is well designed with easy to follow recipes, even for the culinary inept.
The book is broken into sections for babies, toddlers and families, but in truth, pretty much every recipe is suitable for the whole family.
Further instructions for those cooks who like things clearly spelled out for them include how many portions each recipe will make, how long it will take to prepare and cook and if it is suitable for freezing.
Annabel says: “Modern life has done little to displace the importance of meal times in Italy, where busy families unite after a hard day’s work to catch up over a feast of fresh pasta, salad, bread and fruit. In the UK, modern life means that families seldom meet collectively at the table to enjoy lively banter over a home cooked meal. With my Top 100 Pasta Recipes I hope to really show how pasta is the perfect weekday meal for busy families – simple to prepare, takes a matter of minutes to cook and is versatile for family members aged 7 months to 70 years”.
It hardly seems possible for Annabel to excel further in cooking and publishing, but her books just get better and better.
When those preprepared jarred pasta sauces start to take their toll, this book will lift you out of your pasta rut and make fusilli exciting again.
Annabel Karmel’s Top 100 Pasta Dishes, available in hardback, retails at £9.99 and is available to buy from 14th May 2010 as well as online at: www.annabelkarmel.com
Download two of Annabel’s simple baby pasta recipes for free here: