A quick post for pasta cooks. I recently purchased two cookbooks from Kitchen Arts & Letters in New York City: Osteria 16 Cookbook by Emil Alsbo and Morten Kaltoft (2026) and Easy Pasta (2025) put out by Osteria 16.
Osteria 16 is an Italian restaurant in Copenhagen. The Osteria 16 Cookbook has a great collection of 18 pasta recipes. To my mind, however, the stand-alone Easy Pasta cookbook knocks the ball out of the park.
Easy Pasta’s colophon attributes the book’s 36 recipes to Morten Kaltoft and Annemette Aakjaer. Easy and simple recipes, in this case, produce outstanding pasta. I’ve cooked a handful of recipes so far and, in each case, the results have wowed.
Last night I made their recipe for pasta with porcini and ricotta: super easy, very simple and extraordinarily delicious. First, soak dried porcini mushrooms in hot water for 30 minutes. Next, heat olive oil in a large frying pan, add garlic, butter, and bay leaves. Put the soaked mushrooms and some of the mushroom soaking water into the pan. Turn off the heat and wait for your dried pasta to cook. When the pasta nears ready, put the sauce back on heat and tip in the cooked pasta. Simmer for 1 to 2 minutes. Take the pan off heat and add a 50-50 mixture of ricotta and parmesan. Stir well into the pasta to make a creamy sauce. If the sauce looks a little dry, add some of the leftover pasta water to the pan. Squeeze in a little fresh lemon juice and you’re done.
I highly recommend Easy Pasta. Yes, it’s a slender and pricey $50 paperback import. (Recipes are in Danish and English.) But honestly, I think it’s one of the best pasta cookbooks I’ve come across in years. If you like most of the cookbooks I’ve featured in the past, I’m confident you will enjoy this excellent little pasta cookbook.
