Pastabilities!

The idea has been on my mind for a while, to come up a list of my favorite pasta sauce/dishes. Initially I could only draw up three recipes, all cream based. It certainly showed my personal bias in pasta and that I needed to explore more before settling on a final list. So I did. I have been trying various tomato based pasta dishes this year. And how much fun I have had. Exploring new flavor combination is not only fun technically but also a learning process for the taste bud. I really had a great time working my way through the pasta world. The final list will be of course forever changing but here are our favorites so far.

My personal top 10:

Glam Mac and Cheese: the magic ingredient in this recipe is dolcelatte, a milder creation in the blue cheese department for the British market. It perks up your regular mac and cheese like no others. Try it!

Chorizo and Cream: If you like chorizo, you will like this. Quick and tasty. What can you ask for more? When I make it, I omit the herbs as I find them masking the natural flavors of the ingredients unnecessarily. Single cream works for me too. And I sometimes add two bell peppers to the sauce and call it Three-Pepper Pasta.

Pasta Carbonara: I like this Italian classic with caramelized onion, garlic and some cream. And of course, lots of freshly ground black pepper!

Tagliatelle with Gorgonzola and walnut. Walnuts are optional but provide a nice crunch. The Gorgonzola cream sauce is just heavenly.

Sardine, tomato, capers, black olives and chilli pasta. This is my favorite way to eat canned sardines. The ingredient list is very Puttanesca but I prefer sardine to anchovies. You could try with canned tuna too!

Anna del Conte's Tomato and dried porcini sauce

Giada De Laurentiis's Vegetable bolognese

Jamie Oliver's Sausage and fennel seeds pasta

My favorite pasta sauce is Marcella Hazan's Tomato, onion and butter sauce. Hands down. Best sauce ever. Three ingredients, perfectly matched and proportioned. I've tried it on pasta, rice and pizza. It just makes everything taste better. Success every time!