Erica’s week of Annabel Karmel Pasta Recipes
From Erica at LittleMummy.com:
A little while back ok, quite a while back the lovely English Mum asked me to review Annabel Karmel’s book ‘Annabel Karmel’s Top 100 Pasta Recipes’, you see they aren’t big pasta fans over here at English Towers. Of course I was more than happy to oblige, but then I started to worry about how I would keep up the cookery standards you’ve come to expect here on Englishmum’s blog. It’s a well known fact that Englishmum is a baker extraordinaire, even this post involved a bribe for lime and pistachio cupcakes (Englishmum forget my cupcakes and there will be trouble, you hear me?)
Anyway onto fulfilling my end of the bargain, and in answer to the cookery standards quandry I’ve gone with quantity over quality. It was meant to be ‘a week of recipes from Annabel’ (including homemade pasta, with like a pasta making machine and everything), like all the best plans this did not come to fruition and we are left with three recipes (I believe we have a chinese takeaway and a chippy to blame for that *cough*).
Right! So here we have three recipes from Annabel’s book.
Stir-Fried Beef
First up was the stir-fried beef recipe. This recipe had a number of processes, a couple too many in my opinion. The beef ended up a bit soggy and the dish on the whole was a bit flavourless. Oh, and I don’t want to rub it in Annabel but my husband said that my own chilli beef recipe was superior in the flavour department (although this may have been in a bid to secure extra conjugal rights *cough*)
Spicy Sausage Meatball Pasta
Moving on then, the second dish we tried was the spicy sausage meatball pasta. This was delicious and very easy to prepare. The little meatballs were particularly tasty, especially as I made my own pesto *insert smug look* which complemented them beautifully. We even managed to get Erin to eat them passing them off as ‘sausage nuggets’ (she’ll only eat things in nugget form, bloody kids eh). Definitely one to try again and this time I’ll make extra meatballs sausage nuggets to freeze.
Wild Mushroom Tagliatelle
Finally I made mushroom tagliatelle for myself because nobody else likes mushrooms. I made my version with closed cup mushrooms and chestnut mushrooms as I didn’t have any wild ones. It was surprisingly light and very tasty and probably quite low fat as it’s made with creme fraiche. I think you can see that by this point I was finding my feet, see the extra chives on top assembled in decorative manner? I saw that on tv once 
Overall I’d happily recommend Annabel’s book but if you’re cooking for adults be sure to add some extra flavour into the dishes with extra seasoning, garlic, chilli, whatever’s included and then you’ve got some very nice dishes.
Englishmum, should I send you an invoice for the cupcakes?
He’d only said he liked it the first time so he didn’t hurt my feelings and everytime after that he didn’t dare tell me he lied
I’m lucky Erin likes to eat hers plain, just cooked with no sauce or anything, now that’s an easy tea