Simple, Elegant Pasta Dinners: 75 Dishes with Inspired Sauces

In this debut cookbook, Chasing the Seasons blogger Marie writes, “I wanted to create a cookbook to elevate how we think about and cook with pasta,” and she succeeds handily. “If you consider pasta in its most pure state, it is quite plain (in a good way),” Marie writes. “It is precisely this blandness that makes pasta the perfect base for a wide range of unexpectedly delightful flavor combinations.” Marie integrates fresh produce into many of her recipes, dividing them seasonally based on the peak availability of each crop, such as ravioli with port wine and mushroom sauce for autumn, toasted spaghetti aglio e olio for winter, tortellini salad with roasted asparagus pesto for spring, and pasta with caramelized squash and zucchini blossoms for summer. Readers may be pleasantly surprised with some of the dishes that include sweet ingredients, most notably pasta with sausage and roasted red grapes, ravioli with caramelized blood oranges and escarole, pasta with arugula and strawberries, and rigatoni with rosemary-roasted eggplant and blackened cherries. There is also a recipe for basic pasta dough and a handful of fresh pasta dough recipes, such as gnocchi with creamy pumpkin sauce, spaghetti with crisp salami and burrata, and spinach fettucine carbonara. This excellent collection will inspire readers to create memorable, inventive pasta dishes. (Sept.)