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The Pasta Bible
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The Pasta Bible (Canada, UK)
By Christian Teubner, with Tan Lee Leng & Silvio Rizzi
Publisher: Penguin
Publication Date: September 1996
ISBN: 0670869961I like everything about this book. I was already a fan of Christian Teubner’s The Chocolate Bible. Although it will seem inexplicable to many who know me, I believe I like The Pasta Bible even better. It covers, in interesting detail, just about everything you could wish to know about pasta.
The book starts out with historical and background information on pasta (Marco Polo, indeed!), follows with information on the production of both fresh and dried pasta, and covers the huge spectrum of pasta shapes — before heading to the 150-some recipes. The recipes (including several fresh pasta options) cover sauces (tomato, meat, white, and piquant sauces based on garlic, olives, or olive oil); soups; pastas with cheese, herbs, and spices; pastas with vegetables and mushrooms; pastas with seafood (including some of the most elegant pasta recipes imaginable); pastas with meat, poultry, and game; stuffed pasta, baked pasta dishes, dumplings and gnocchi; and dessert pastas.
Clearly, Italy would be the focus of any book on pasta, but The Pasta Bible includes a fair representation of Chinese and other Asian dishes, including various noodle and wonton soups, dumplings, vegetable and seafood dishes, and egg rolls. Teubner’s co-authors are Tan Lee Leng, a Chinese chef and food writer, and Silvio Rizzi, a Swiss food critic.
Teubner’s and Rizzi’s Teutonic influences are obvious, and are reflected in a wide variety of German, Austrian, and Swiss pasta dishes, including Spätzle, traditional dumplings, and a number of intriguing dessert pastas (Teubner is a pastry chef by training, so it is not surprising, perhaps, to see Viennese Noodle Pudding with Hazelnuts and other sweet pasta dishes). There are also Turkish, Greek, Moroccan, and Polish recipes. The variety is astounding.
Among his other talents, Teubner is a “world-renowned food photographer” (in the words of his publisher), and his work is exceptionally well represented in more than 1,000 photos in this book — including many step-by-step-instruction photo sequences, but also incredibly tempting photos of finished dishes. The photo of Tortelli with Oxtail Stuffing with a rich gravy with chanterelle mushrooms, makes me wish I had an oxtail handy or could procure one easily on the Sunday afternoon as I write this. It would be a feast for dinner tonight.
Not even the slightest nod in The Pasta Bible is given to the food police — and the words low-fat, reduced, and “lite,” are not even whispered here. But that’s not to imply that all the dishes are uniformly rich or heavy. There are many light dishes, especially in keeping with the Italian practice that pastas nowadays generally precede the main course. There are also few references to cost, or the length of time required to prepare most dishes, and some recipes call for ingredients that are hard or impossible to come by in the United States, such as quark, speck, Westphalian ham, wild boar, etc.
Teubner is one of an apparently declining number of cookbook authors who assumes his readers are capable of deciding what dishes are appropriate for them — nutritionally, economically, and in terms of availability of ingredients and preparation time. He does, however, let you know that making fresh ravioli from scratch needs “a rainy afternoon and a whole army of assistants.” But, he adds, “it is also extremely rewarding.”
The bottom line is that there are a lot of recipes here that can be thrown together quickly with dried pasta and a few simple ingredients, some incredibly complex fresh pasta dishes requiring two-dozen ingredients and several free hours, and scores of delicious recipes that fall somewhere in between.
Unlike many cookbooks, in which only a modest percentage of the recipes really look appealing, nearly all of the recipes in this book look exceptional. If you didn’t have religion before, you will after reading The Pasta Bible!
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