Diane Seed, "The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces"

[stapsreads]

I have attempted three of these top one hundred pasta sauces, and can happily report that this book is a keeper. While it's a bit prescriptive and inclined to go on about what Proper Italian Housewives do, particularly in the cooking of the actual pasta, the recipes are good, clear and tasty. It's also old enough (1987) that the ingredients that were obscure when it was first published are now available at pretty much every supermarket (e.g. mozzarella, olives).

I made Spaghetti Vesuvio (a tomato sauce, not spicy at all - the vulcanicity is in the appearance, with melted mozzarella streaming forth like molten lava); Linguine con Peperoni - sweet peppers cooked long and slow and then put through a sieve; Conchiglie alla Burina - with sausages, tomato and peas. All good.