COOK WITH CALDESI:Italians are notoriously picky about what they put on their pasta, so it comes as a surprise to find Tuscan-born chef and cookery-school owner Giancarlo Caldesi drumming up recipes incorporating Dolmio's new Taste of Italy sauces.
But, having tasted them, these are far better quality than most commercial sauces. There are four varieties - Taste of Sorrento (cherry tomatoes, basil and Parmesan); Taste of Calabria (tomatoes, pepperoni, garlic and chilli); Taste of Rome (tomatoes, fresh cream and ricotta cheese) and Taste of Tuscany (tomatoes, parsley and Chianti wine).
The chef featured last year in a BBC television series, Return to Tuscany, charting his adventures in setting up a cookery school in Tuscany, and he also runs a restaurant and cookery school in London.
Dolmio is bringing Caldesi to Dublin on Tuesday, May 29th, to launch the range, and readers can win one of 16 invitations to an Italian cooking workshop he will be doing at Cook's Academy in Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, at 6.30pm that evening. To enter, e-mail you name, address and mobile telephone number to TasteofItaly@edelman.com, or post it to PO Box 7808, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin, to arrive by next Thursday. Winners will be selected at random and will be notified by phone.
DOLMIO TASTE OF CALABRIA SAUCE
(€2.49, 350g, SERVES TWO): Scepticism gave way
to curiosity when the lid was popped on this jar - it smelled a lot
better than expected, and the colour was realistic rather than
synthetic.
It was delicious when stirred into a dish of al dente penne, mixed with chunks of buffalo mozzarella and finished off in the oven. It's hot stuff, though: even with the cooling mozzarella it still packed a big chilli punch. There was plenty of texture from the pepperoni pieces, and, best of all, nobody at the table suspected it came from a jar. Perhaps the added mozzarella had something to do with that, but for a quick store-cupboard supper it hit all the right notes.
Giancarlo Caldesi's recipe collection for the launch of this range suggests using this one with fried eggs and truffle oil, or with calamari and lemon zest. But we'll stick to the penne and mozzarella. Marie-Claire Digby