Running to over 400 pages and with 150 recipes, the latest cookbook from French-founded Italian restaurant group Big Mamma is comprehensive to say the least. From essential pasta dishes, to stuffed pasta, pasta bakes and even pasta salads the myriad of recipes featured in the book make for an impressive run through of Italy’s staple cuisine, put together by a team of Big Mamma chefs, and shows there really is something for everyone.
Unlike most comprehensive books on the subject (if not all?) that begin with an introduction to the dish, an explanation of how it is made and the various shapes and sizes in which pasta comes, Big Mamma’s tome gets straight to the point with a recipe for a simple spaghetti scarparielo kicking things off. Thus follows a rapid-fire of almost 60 essential pasta recipes pausing for breath only briefly to debunk a few pasta cooking myths and identify Italy’s different pasta regions, before careering onwards into chapters on stuffed pasta, 5-star pasta, pasta bakes and alternative pasta dishes. It is only when you get to the end of the book - having passed the final chapter on pasta-based desserts - that you find a tutorial on how to make the various pasta shapes, with the technique to make no fewer than 44 shapes detailed in a very helpful three-step picture format.
What is perhaps most notable about the book, however, is the challenge the Big Mamma team set for themselves when putting it together. If compiling 150 pasta recipes wasn’t enough, each is accompanied by a Big Mamma style pun which, as any journalist will tell you, can be remarkably tricky when you have more than 100 to do on a very similar topic. Some land really well - ‘Ricotta get through this’ for a dish of cappellacci bicolore rocotta e spinaci is a favourite, but other highlights include ‘Benefit of the trout’ for a gnocchi and trout dish; ‘It’s mint to be’ for a trofie, pesto and mint dish; ‘50 shades of gricia’; ‘Gourd vibes only’ and ‘Here comes truffle’.
Moreover, every dish is accompanied by ‘On repeat in the kitchen’, a choice of Italian-language song to play while cooking, another fun addition that doubtless took a lot of time and effort to put together (thankfully Spotify has many of the even the more obscure choices).
Here then is a serious book on Italy’s great dish but with the wit and flair that has made Big Mamma’s restaurants so popular not just on these shores but across Europe. Open the book, get your Spotify playlist to channel Puccini (or Marco Mengoni) and dive in.
Big Mamma Pasta - 150 of the Best Italian Pasta Recipes
Number of pages: 411
Must-try recipe: Pastiss alla piacentina
Publisher and price: White Lion Publishing, £26