recipe carousel #16 - pasta

This weekend was a long weekend in Sydney and other parts of Australia.

Three of my girlfriends (Shelley, Em & Vicky) and one of my sisters (Shamu) got together and organised a girly “bridal shower” weekend in the Hunter Valley – one of Australia’s oldest wine regions.

We spent three days tasting wines, eating cheese, taking group photos of us jumping in the air and we even indulged in a cooking class.

It was at this lesson that I learnt to cook gnocchi and for the first time EVER I actually enjoyed eating it. Usually I think of gnocchi as gluggly, starchy stomach bombs but these were light and deliciously flavoured with a vegetarian caponata style sauce. I’ll be cooking that again for sure!

So in honour of my new love of gnocchi, I've come up with seven other pasta dishes to rock your world.

Also, I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm travelling interstate for work this week so I'm afraid there probably won't be any posts until Sunday. Sorry about that!!!

Now here's the food . . .

Pumpkin, Sage & Goat’s Cheese Ravioli comes from pasta master JenJen in Australia (Milk & Cookies). JenJen had to overcome her doubting family who didn’t believe she was capable of making anything let alone a pasta production line. Check out the photos and her recipe to see just how wrong they were! Photo courtesy of JenJen.


Hilopittes & Peas. Stevi in Greece (Bread and Butter) uses flat square shaped pasta called hilopittes and combines them with freshly shelled peas, garlic, spring onions, pine nuts, vegetable stock and mint to create this light, refreshing pasta meal. Photo courtesy of Stevi.


Garlic Scape Pesto was a recipe drawn together from various web inspirations by Kalyn in the USA (Kalyn's Kitchen). Kalyn uses the garlic shoots to create a creamy, garlicky pesto for linguini. She also recommends serving this with fish, toasted bread or rice. Now this is more of a sauce dish than a pasta one, but pesto does go on pasta so I wanted it in! Photo courtesy of Kalyn.


Beetroot Pasta w Pine Nuts, Pear & Lime. This interesting concoction comes from Ilva in Italy (Lucullian Delights). As part of a Paper Chef comp, Ilva devised this wonderful looking pasta and flavoured the sauce with asparagus, pears and lime. The final colour combination was intriguing. Photo courtesy of Ilva.


Spaghetti Nicoise comes from Renz in the USA (Little Bouffe). Renz melds a famous salad with pasta to make a delicious summer meal. Eggs, beans, olives and tuna mix beautifully with spaghetti for a flavoursome lunch, dinner or glorious snack. Photo courtesy of Renz.


Rigatoni Al Forno may have been Nigella Lawson’s recipe but Plum in Australia (My Favourite Plum) makes it her own. A classic lasagne recipe is reinvented as a pasta bake. Meat sauce and béchamel are layered with rigatoni for the perfect winter feast for a hungry family or a casual dinner with friends. Photo courtesy of Plum.


Farfalle w Golden Beets & Gorgonzola is a golden dream from Catherine in the USA (Albion Cooks). Butterfly shaped pasta bows are served with steamed beets, caramelised onions flavoured with vermouth, cream, gorgonzola and some watercress. Photo courtesy of Catherine.


Add your own recipe!
If you want to link in your own pasta recipe and share the love around, just leave the link in the comments section. You didn’t have to invent the recipe yourself, just make it and post it on your site. The whole idea of Recipe Carousel is that good recipes are shared with people who love to cook.
Note: Usual comments are more than welcome but all html links must be recipe related (yours or others).

Check out other Recipe Carousel themes: yoghurt, crispy snacks, vegetable desserts, fruit in savoury food, made from scratch, strawberries, jam, bread, seafood mains, ice cream, soup, chocolate and drinks.




Tags: morsels and musings food blog food and drink australia recipes recipe carousel pasta italian italian recipes pesto farfalle spaghetti rigatoni ravioli hilopittes