Download a cookbook--Support America's Second Harvest

A friend who works for the Food Bank for NYC sent me their newsletter. It includes a description of a Barilla Pasta campaign that will donate $1 to America's Second Harvest or your local food bank in exchange for very little information (name and e-mail, with an opt-out Barilla marketing link) any time anyone downloads their celebrity pasta cookbook.

Download link and more information here.

The recipes look not bad. Not as fabulous as Antonius' recipes, of course, but perfectly useable, and with nice pictures.

I like that "Harrison Ford's Spaghetti with Spicy Tomato Sauce" (Inspired by Harrison Ford’s favorite pasta dish, recreated by Giada De Laurentiis) is, in fact, a basically straight puttanesca.

I don't get why they call for farfalle in the ingredients in one dish, but can't call it puttanesca..

Anyway, at least they include the anchovies. Although the wine and basil are slightly odd touches to me.

The Pumpkin Sage Butter Tortellini ("Inspired by Ashley Judd's Favorite Pasta Dish, Recreated by Marlo Batali") looks simple enough---butter, sage, frozen tortellini (guess what brand) and pumpkin.

But wait. It calls for

1/2 cup pumpkin puree or pumpkin pie filling

I don't think so. I doubt if Mario Batali made this mistake. More likely someone at the ad agency who put the book together. But pity the person who picks up the wrong can at the supermarket.

Ann Fisher wrote:The recipes look not bad. Not as fabulous as Antonius' recipes, of course, but perfectly useable, and with nice pictures.

Ann,

Many thanks for the very kind words and thanks too for the Barilla-recipe link. I downloaded the recipes -- it's good to help get the corporate beast to give something back -- and looked them over... interesting, but the recipes generally bear the marks of having been gone over by the two FN cooks they brought in (De Laurentiis and Batali)...

As you note above, the pumpkin pie filling is a weird suggestion for Judd's favourite dish. I assume though that the intended product is unspiced, unsweetened canned pumpkin, but the wording certainly sounds odd.

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gleam wrote:I like that "Harrison Ford's Spaghetti with Spicy Tomato Sauce" (Inspired by Harrison Ford’s favorite pasta dish, recreated by Giada De Laurentiis) is, in fact, a basically straight puttanesca.
I don't get why they call for farfalle in the ingredients in one dish, but can't call it puttanesca..
Anyway, at least they include the anchovies. Although the wine and basil are slightly odd touches to me.

G,

From an American perspective, you're right, this recipe fits into the range of dishes that are called alla puttanesca in restaurants and in printed recipes in this country. But from an Italian perspective, with three extra (non-canonical) ingredients, there's justification not to call this recipe "alla puttanesca," so I think they were right on this score.

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I can't say I'm surprised but Mr. Batali has again put forth his very un-Italian, strongly garlickised version of alla matriciana. He knows better but in the end reverts to his gringo approach:
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=20918#20918

Antonius wrote:I referred above to an exchange on the issue of the presence of garlic in this dish that I had with someone on Planet Leff; the discussion can be found here: CH General Topics discussion of alla matriciana.
The person with whom I had this discussion in turn wrote in to Mario Batali on eGullet, whose response to her questions about the dish and more generally on the use of garlic can be found here: Marius (Batali) agrees with Antonius on eGullet about alla matriciana.†

Then again, what do I know... Maybe I should attend that Chicago Foodways talk on Saturday morning...
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=11436

Antonius