Only Recipes, by Alessandra Zecchini ©

To do this you need an afternoon, as it is not a quick dinner! On the other hand, you could make it the day before, which is actually better, but I will tell you later about that. To start I cooked a pack of paccheri from  Italian Foodies , then I drained them and cooled them under cold water. In the meantime I made a vegetarian ragù, starting with a  soffritto : finely chop 1 onion, 1carrot, 1 garlic clove, 2 stalks of celery with leaves and some Italian parsley. Sauté the vegetables with some olive oil and a pinch of salt. Then add soy mince, vegetable stock and tomato passata and simmer for at least 30 minutes, or until the sauce is thick. Make a white sauce  ( Besciamella )  with milk, flour, butter, salt, pepper and nutmeg:  melt 100 g of salted butter in a saucepan, then add 100 g of plain flour and stir. Add 1.5 l of milk slowly (this needs more milk than usual as it needs to be a little runny), stirring constantly without ma...

Paccheri are hollow pasta tubes that look like rigatoni or tortiglioni, but with a difference: the paccheri tubes flatten once they are cooked. Usually the have very rich sauces, but I am one for 'less is more' these days, and so here I just warmed up a ready made Italian tomato passata ( a good one ). Once the passata was hot I added some salt, extra virgin olive oil and finely chopped Italian parsley with garlic. These days I am chopping a lot of parsley and garlic together, it is too early for basil, and parsley taste really good in Italy! Also, I like the idea of having a cooked sauce but with raw herbs and garlic in it: the taste changes completely. Simple but really effective!!! If you are not vegan you can add some ricotta to this. Photos by Alessandra Zecchini©