Pasta with borlotti beans

Nigella and I have one thing in common. It’s not the whole lust-inducing-spoon-licking thing she’s got going on, instead, it’s a shared love of Italy related subjects. Well, actually it goes a bit further than that: both of us have spent a large portion of our lives pretending to be Italian.

I once had a dreams of actually becoming Italia, be it through complete integration into Italy or simple transmogrification. Whilst this aspiration has been given up on, I do still, rather shamefully, try to give the outward impression of being Italianified – I have my own moka pot for goodness sake! However, putting all the pretences aside, there is one basic condition of being Italian that I’ve failed at: The language.

Tell anybody that you’ve spent a good four months living in Italy and they’d assume you have at least a pretty basic level of Italian. Unfortunately in my case, they’d be wrong.

Sure, on those forms where you can boast about your language capabilities (or lack of) I might put ‘basic Italian’ next to ‘shockingly shit Spanish’. But this does not mean I can hold a conversation, or even form a sentence. It means I know the words for ‘cake’, ‘sugar’, ‘fry the shallots for three minutes’ along with many other pretty useless culinary terms. Basically, I’m about Italian as Nigella’s new cookery book, and that’s saying something.

Although openly unauthentic, Nigellissima is marvellous – here’s the lady herself at a recent book signing my sister and I attended. What a Goddess.

A few weeks ago however, my Italian linguistical knowledge of food was put to good use. It all started – as with most things on this blog – with Dom’s Random Recipe Challenge. After using my age to pick out the most random of books in my collection, I landed on ‘Pasta’, A cookery book written entirely in Italian. Finding myself on a recipe for ‘Rigatoni con Salsiccia e Borlotti’ – Pasta with Sausage and Borlotti Beans – it didn’t matter that I couldn’t understand the recipe description, I knew this was going to be delicious.

The wonderful thing about cooking from a book written in the cuisine’s native language, is that you can be quite sure you’re going to end up with the real deal. And the real deal this was. The beans melt into the deliciously rich tomato sauce and the inclusion of handfuls of sage, parsley and basil creates such a beautifully rounded dish.

And through cooking it, I felt I came just a little closer to becoming Italian myself. Small steps people, small steps.

An unashamed attempt at Italian chic.

Rigatoni con Salsiccia e Borlotti (from ‘Le migliori ricette di pasta’)

Serves 4-6

500g of rigatoni pasta

1 tbsp olive oil

1 chopped onion

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

4 sausages cut into pieces

425g cooked borlotti beans

2 tins of plum tomatoes

2 tbsp chopped basil

1 tbsp chopped sage

1 tbsp chopped parsley

25g grated parmesan

Salt and pepper

 

1. 1.    Heat the oil in a large pan and add the onion, garlic and sausage. Cook on medium for five minutes.
2. 2.    Add the tomatoes, beans, herbs, salt and pepper. Lower the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
3. 3.    While the sauce cooks, cook the pasta in salted water, drain and spoon onto warmed plates with the sauce. Top with the parmesan.

Buon Appetito!