A Taste of Italy

This week on my Leiths Plant-Based Cooking course was all about Italian food, and I made three gorgeous dishes: tagliatelle with basil pesto, crespelle alla fiorentina and an Italian olive oil cake. I also made a vegan ‘Parmesan’ to go with the pasta.

The absolute star for me was the Lemon, Blackberry and Rosemary olive oil cake. I’m usually a terrible baker, but this came out so well – genuinely one of the nicest cakes I’ve ever had! The whole family loved it. It was beautifully moist and the olive oil gave it such a lovely texture.

I already can’t wait to make it again and experiment with some different flavours – although shamefully, perhaps not vegan! I can imagine chocolate and orange working incredibly well in this cake.

Tagliatelle with basil pesto

I’ve made fresh pasta on previous courses, but this was my first time making a water-based pasta dough, rather than one containing eggs. I actually much preferred the flavour.

The tutor suggested we try cutting the tagliatelle by hand rather than using a pasta machine. I’m so glad I did, I was really pleased with how it came out, and it was so satisfying lifting the pasta ribbons with the technique learned.

The pesto was served with a homemade vegan ‘Parmesan’, made predominantly from nuts and nutritional yeast flakes. I’d never cooked with nutritional yeast before and absolutely loved the savoury, umami flavour it gave. It’s definitely an ingredient I want to explore more – I’m already investigating what else I can make with it.

My only complaint about this dish was that there wasn’t more of it! It disappeared incredibly quickly, with my boys and husband wolfing it down.

Crespelle alla fiorentina

The crespelle went completely to plan and turned out just as it should, but I have to admit this was the one dish that wasn’t really for me.

It used a vegan cheese which, to put it politely, made its presence known throughout the kitchen! I wasn’t particularly keen on the flavour either. Interestingly, I much preferred the nut-based ‘cheese’ we made to accompany the pesto, so that was a useful discovery in itself.

Overall, though, this was another week where I learnt loads of new techniques and discovered ingredients I hadn’t cooked with before. And that olive oil cake alone is a recipe I think I’ll be making again and again.