Traditional peasant cooking is the foundation of even the most extravagant haute cuisine. Simple, thrifty recipes allow ingredients to speak for themselves rather than hiding them behind a mask of complex techniques and flavour combinations. Peasant cuisine is (more often than not) inherently low-waste, making the most of every last morsel. I like to take inspiration from these recipes, cutting down on waste by using whole ingredients within each dish – for example, not separating egg yolks to make pasta, unless the white has a place elsewhere in the same recipe.
Maltagliati is in its essence a classic zero-waste product, turning food that would otherwise have been wasted into a wondrous ingredient. The idea of this recipe is that it can be used to save any pasta scraps from a batch of pasta you’ve already made; however, in case you want to make pasta especially, I’ve included my recipe for wholewheat pasta from my cookbook, Eating for Pleasure, People & Planet, below.
