Tagliatelle with Smoked Salmon, Dill & Capers in a Garlic Cream Sauce

I prefer pastas in an oil based sauce because it's healthier. But sometimes, one can indulge. This pasta has a cream based sauce, but it's light. Instead of using full cream, I used light sour cream and some of the pasta water to make sure it's moist. Despite the substitutions, it's just as delicious! It is very easy to make too. Perfect for a quick, home cooked weekend lunch!

Tagliatelle with Leeks and Prosciutto, topped with Pangrattato

This is one of my family's favourite pasta dishes. It's actually adapted from Jamie Oliver's recipe.

The pasta is enhanced by a topping of pangrattato, etymology of which is from pane (bread) and grattato (grated). I read somewhere that this was the poor Italian man's substitute for parmesan cheese, which was a more expensive commodity. Pangrattato is made from dried mushroom, breadcrumbs, rosemary and garlic.  In Jamie's recipe, he uses dried porcini mushrooms, but since that is very expensive here in Singapore, I just use dried shitake mushrooms and it's fine.

The dish doesn't use as much pasta as other pasta dishes because half of it is made of leeks.

Fettuccini with Lemon & Mushroom Cream Sauce

I went to Rome a few months ago and bought this delightful box of mushroom flavoured, egg based fettuccine. I decided to cook it with a lemony cream sauce with mushroom and parsley. It's very easy to make.

Since mushroom flavoured fettuccine is not readily available in Singapore, you can just use regular fettuccine or spaghetti pasta.

Spaghetti with Shrimp & Roe

This is one of my favourite "go to" recipes when I want to make a quick seafood pasta. It's easy to make, flavourful and lemony. It uses two types of roe and some nori (seaweed).

Strozzapreti with Cherry Tomatoes, Bell Peppers & Chorizo

Here's a dish inspired by something I ate at Rome a few weeks ago. It's Strozzapreti Pasta; literally, it means "priest strangler." Click here to learn more about the pasta's unique name.  I've mixed this with some very fresh cherry tomatoes and bell peppers in yellow and red, as well as some chorizo. You can use bacon too, but since I had an oversupply of chorizo in the ref, it seemed opportune to just use that.

Zucchini "Pasta" with Mushrooms, Tofu & Fresh Oregano

I made this dish a month ago, after our recent family vacation in Spain. It was really great, from a historical, cultural and gastronomical standpoint. We loved the food and could immediately identify with it, as there are many common dishes between Spanish and Filipino cuisine. However, we sorely missed vegetables! Aside from the potato and occasional eggplant, there was hardly any vegetables among the food that we ate in Spain. :( Our family likes to eat healthy and after almost two weeks of a delicious but meat intensive diet, it was time to purge and go back to simple vegetables.

Thus, the weekend after we came back, we experimented with making a fully vegetarian "pasta" made from zucchini "noodles," mushrooms, cubed tofu and fresh oregano.

Squid Ink Linguini with Seafood and Pink Peppercorns

Made this spicy, seafood pasta for Christmas dinner a few months ago. Though the noodles are black, the parsley and pink peppercorns make it a colourful, festive and delicious dish!

If you are intimidated by the squid ink in the linguini, replace it with regular linguini. At any rate, you can't taste any of the ink anyway in the pasta.

Spaghetti with (Giant!) Meatballs

This is a dish my son and I love to make together. It's simple, comfort food made from scratch. Nothing fancy, just pure, simple, fresh Italian flavours.

My son had fun mixing and making the meatballs, and we made too much, but I figured we'd eat the meatballs for breakfast this week too. You can also serve them with mushroom sauce (see post on My Mom's Hamburger recipe for the sauce here).

Don't let the picture deceive you. Those meatballs are huge; 2" in diameter!

Gnocchetti with Pistachio Pesto, Chorizo & Mushroom

As you may have noticed, I have been posting a lot about bread lately, due to the requirements of Panasonic Singapore (sponsor of the Best Cooking Blog category in the 2014 Singapore Blog Awards) to produce 3 recipes using their Bread Maker. Please don't forget to vote! You can do so EVERYDAY, till JULY 31! Please click on the links below to do so.

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But contest or no contest, life goes on for MySuit&Apron, and my weekly recipe posts shall continue.  So what shall it be this week? I consulted the whole family last night and showed them my 20 draft posts, and they voted for this pasta. I'm the official "pasta chef" in the family and it's one of my most favourite things to cook. This time it's Gnocchetti with Pistachio Pesto, Chorizo & Mushroom. Of course, if you don't have gnocchetti, you can substitute with any pasta you have at hand.

The recipe is a twist on the usual pesto which is made from basil leaves, pine nuts, parmesan, garlic and oil. Pine nuts are sooo expensive here in Singapore, that I feel guilty just grinding them and "hiding" them in the sauce. Thus, I substituted that with pistachio nuts but still used whole, toasted pine nuts to mix with the pasta. This way, you can really taste the pine nuts with every bite. The combination with chorizo (and that delicious, orange lard that goes with it) makes this dish so flavourful. A little sinful, but hey, live a little, right?

Thai Spicy Beef & Whole Peppercorn Pasta

Whenever I visit Bangkok, one of my favourite dishes to eat there is a Thai-Italian fusion pasta at The Greyhound Cafe. It is a pasta with Thai ingredients like raw, green, whole peppercorns and Thai basil.  Whole green peppercorn is the dried, unripe fruit of the pepper plant.  It has an interesting, fresh taste and is not THAT spicy.

See more here on the different kinds of pepper:

Peppers - black, green, white and pink....

I buy the green, whole peppercorn and the Thai basil (which is different from Italian basil and more pungent) from Golden Mile Complex in Singapore, the frequent habitué of Thai workers here. I have tried looking for these in the neighbourhood wet market or supermarket, but have not seen any. Lots of authentic Thai ingredients at Golden Mile, including Sriracha sauce!

Here's my take on this Thai-Italian dish.

Linguini with Squid, Crab, Cherry Tomatoes and Breadcrumbs

This is a seafood pasta dish, with crab claw meat, flower cut squid, and yellow cherry tomatoes. The flavoured, toasted breadcrumbs on top add a great texture to the dish.

Strozzapreti with Spinach, Mushrooms and Sundried Tomato

On a recent business trip to Cincinnati, I ate at an American Italian Restaurant with my friend and colleague, M. We had an antipasti of Buffalo Mozzarella, with Tomatoes and Basil. So fresh! We shared a pasta (you know how American servings are, soooo huge!), which the restaurant called as "Country Style Pasta with Brocollini," with oven dried tomatoes, garlic and white wine sauce.

When the dish arrived, the pasta looked like short strips of dough which were rolled, so that it almost looked like coils with thin ends. Then I remembered watching a food show a few months back, showing two old Italian grandmothers, hand rolling these pasta, which are actually called strozzapreti. Strozzapreti literally means "Priest Strangler!" Why? Check out the interesting story behind the unique name here.

A few days later, on the way back to Singapore, I passed by New York City for a few days. On a visit to a Greenwich Village shop selling cheese, jams, foie gras and other deli items, lo and behold, I saw strozzapreti there and bought some!

Inspired by that dish at that American Italian restaurant, I've recreated my version of the dish here, Strozzapreti with Spinach, Mushrooms and Sundried Tomato, especially dedicated to my Pinoy friend M, now a Cincinnati resident.

This is a vegetarian version but you can easily turn it into a non-vegetarian one by adding some sausages. Or even bacon.

Spaghettini with Roe, Dill & Smoked Salmon

It's Good Friday, so no meat allowed for Christians. Here's a seafood pasta dish, that's fragrant due to the fresh dill herbs and a sprinkling of yuzu pepper. Very unique and refreshing.

Baked Cheesy Rigatoni with Spicy Sausage

This is like Mac & Cheese but only better. The rigatoni pasta is much bigger than macaroni, and holds more of the cheesy sauce, and the spicy sausage adds a flavour contrast to an otherwise rich dish. It's baked with flavoured breadcrumbs which makes the top crispy. Mmmmm!

Bihod (Fish Roe) & Clam Pasta

This is a very easy seafood pasta to make, made from bihod, which is fish roe from the Philippines. I suppose you can use other kinds of roe, but the one I use comes in a bottle, and what must be a thousand tiny fish eggs are submerged in olive oil. I don't think it's available in Singapore; I either buy it in Manila when I go there for a trip, or friends and family bring it over for me.