Odette Williams is the author of 'Simple Pasta: Pasta Made Simple. Life Made Better.' She joins Cheddar News to talk about her new cookbook and teaches us how to make some of her recipes.

Between Bells

New Cookbook 'Simple Pasta' Makes Cooking Homemade Pasta a Breeze

Welcome back Friends Between Bells The baker machado in new york Brooklyn based Australian cook and writer Odette Williams, she definitely knows how to help people cook in a way that's fun and easy. And now she's bringing readers a new cookbook just in time for the fall. Simple pasta, pasta made easy. Life made better. It showcases Odette signature style of bringing effortless and laid back elegance to everyday cooking and entertaining. But this time it's for all you pasta lovers out there and who doesn't love pasta? So joining us now in studio is owed det Williams cook writer and author again of simple pasta, pasta made Simple life made better and whose life is not made better after pasta. That's exactly right. So by the way, so your first book, you had just a few years ago, which was about cake, it was called simple cake was named by the new york times is one of their best cookbooks of 2019. So after that was over, you're like, okay, what am I gonna do next? What card am I going to move to next pasta? I know, I know it's a tough job. So what was sort of thought process after that to create this one? Well, I have been one of those souls who have like eaten pasta five nights a week. I adore it. It's never let me down. Even bad pasta is good pasta and it was during the pandemic when we were like deprived of pleasure and having like friends over. So I just wanted to like create a book that was like really simple for home cooks so that when they were having friends over, they weren't sweating it, they were just having fun. So the most important thing with really good pasta is the dough and you teach your readers in the book how to make homemade dough, but for a lot of people that can be a little bit intimidating cause there's so much work that goes into it. So what sort of the key in your mind to really nailing the dough? Look, All you've got to think is it's flour and water or it's flour and eggs. So it's so, so simple and then potato gnocchi is essentially mashed potato with an egg and parmesan cheese in there, a bit of salt and pepper. So when you kind of, I think people get intimidated when they hear the word dough, so don't think dough mixing wet and dry together, rolling it out and making something yummy that you want and it looks like we're showing our viewers right now the gnocchi right there, which looks incredible. So you, by the way, have some pasta here because this room smells so good right now with all the fresh herbs and the pasta that we have here. So walk us through some of the dish, some of these look incredible. So I know you're hungry, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna just give you a really easy lunch or dinner that's kind of like a no cook dinner. So this is a chopped salad pasta, all those anti pasta flavors, a big bowl and really, I've just cooked some pasta, I've splashed a bit of oil on it and now I've just got some salami. So do you want to put that in? Okay. Yes, I would love to put the whole thing in and then I've got some provolone cheese and I've just set up, who doesn't love that? Okay, and then we've got some radicchio which adds a little like, I like, I like the texture also in all of these, which is really good totally because it's like when you, when you take a mouthful, you just want to like get everything and this, by the way, my favorite part, the crunch. So you have, so you have diced red tomatoes and then you have one of these and then we've got some chickpeas. Yes, so this is really, this is like the perfect sort of almost like a salad in this particular sense because you're getting all this sort of chopped salad elements in here, but you're getting your kind of filling yourself up. So this could either be a side or it could be amazing. This would be amazing. Right? So your job is to pick out some. Yes, indeed. And then I'm just going to dress it and in the dressing, it's just like a simple vinaigrette. So just like olive oil a little bit of grainy mustard and so we're going to dress and then I'm a big fan of black pepper for the more, the better on that thing. And then by the way, the key and all that freshly grated, it has to be freshly, totally, totally. And then you just mix it together. Oh, that looks so good. Oh dad. Oh my goodness. And it travels well. If you want to take it on a picnic, it's like just take a little bit, I put my finger in this and I'm going to have a little bit too, oh my God, the cheese and that. It was so good. The textures are really, really, really, really good. What's this one? It's tomato season especially with heirlooms and when they're so good, you don't need to cook it really, you know, it just needs the heat of the pasta to soften it with a bit of butter, a bit of oil, salt and pepper. And then really I've got here, this is my trick. I have prosciutto that I fried into little crispy if you fry it, what did you do with that? So you just put it in a little shallow fry of oil and I put a few garlic cloves in there and then it infuses it with garlic and then you can just pop it on, it's almost like bacon almost in a sense it's totally like bacon, but even better because it gets crispier and then I've got some fresh ricotta here, so we're just gonna dollop someone if you want, you want to put on some more prosciutto. Yes, I do, I do. And then so good because you can taste the garlic infused it totally, totally. And then we're just going to dollop on that and then I'm gonna lick my fingers, go right ahead, that's fine. We're here, we're here hands, so go ahead and then we're just going to put on some, let's put on the pretty into it and then you want the full leaf on this or do you like it to be torn up a little bit. You can tear it up, you can chop it up, you can like, but I like to just put the, once heard Alice water say she likes basil looks so it looks like it's just blown. Yes, that's actually a good point by the way for our viewers, there's the recipe right there on their screen right there and this is really easy because these are all things you can find in a grocery store. These are easy things and then this is my other favorite. So then you just put on some dramatic. Yes, but the presentation on this is so I mean look, if you had friends over and you're bringing this out, they would be eaten in like two seconds. Okay, so what are some common misconceptions out there Odette when it comes to making pasta besides maybe just the intimate part that a lot of people probably feel, look, I, here's the reason why I wrote the book. I had adored pasta, but never made my own pasta till I was 40 and I was like, if I'm a really good cook, and if I hadn't have made my own pasta, there must be other people out there that hadn't made pasta as well. So, I, when I started making it, I was like, why have I not done this earlier? And look and look how easy all of this? And so now I make homemade pasta on a weeknight and I busted out and everyone's happy. And it's just one of those things in life where if I had told you, you're going to make your own pasta for lasagna, you'll be a happy man. 100% my husband will be very happy if I did that as well. Thank you. This is also incredibly delicious. I'm gonna be eating all of this throughout the commercial break. Odette Williams cook writer and author in the book. Simple pasta. Pasta made Simple Life Made better. You can preorder her book right now, before it comes out on august the 30th, next Tuesday, Odette such a pleasure to have you here