Hi, this is the thirty third post about the art of cooking and tossing Italian pasta.
Today we want to tell you about another well known Italian dish:  Bolognese tagliatelle.
Outside Italy a lot of people think Bolognese spaghetti is an authentic Italian dish.
It’s wrong!
In Italy we haven’t the habit to toss spaghetti with Bolognese sauce.
We use Bolognese sauce for tagliatelle, cannelloni (you know it as manicotti, of course) and lasagna.
On the contrary there are a lot of Italian sauces to toss spaghetti. In the next entries we’ll show you the most common and famous.

Now let’s talk about Bolognese tagliatelle! You can read the authentic recipe on this page.
Below you can read more details about this recipe: the secrets of our original home cooking and the rules to serve this dish correctly.

Look at the photo below: this is a tasty dish of tagliatelle made at home and tossed with the  fantastic ragù (ragout) from Bologna (Bolognese sauce). Read more details to prepare the sauce and make egg pasta and then tagliatelle at home.

You can make the pasta sauce both with red wine and white wine. Choose the ingredients you prefer. In the photo you can see the sauce made with white wine.  We think this is the best sauce.

You can use the tagliatelle you prefer.  So you aren’t obliged to do homemade pasta,  you can also buy  ready to cook fresh tagliatelle or dried tagliatelle.

Bolognese tagliatelle and its sauce

Look at the photo for more details. This sauce isn’t rich in tomato as you can see in the recipe ingredients too! This is the first rule to serve Bolognese tagliatelle. You have to eat the pasta with its sauce not the sauce with its pasta.

Serve Bolognese  tagliatelle, already tossed, directly in the plate  as you can see in the photo. This is the second rule. We teach you why it is important to serve tagliatelle in this way.
Tagliatelle is a long pasta. The authentic tagliatelle strips are 1 metre (39 in) long.
Imagine to bring a bowl full of tossed tagliatelle to the table. What could happen  while you’re serving your guests and transferring such a long tossed pasta from the bowl  to the plate?
Another mistake is to drain tagliatelle, transfer it into a plate and put a ladle of sauce on the top. Every guest should mix the tagliatelle together with the sauce with his fork on the plate. First of all tagliatelle gets sticky in few moments and everyone could have more problems in tossing it. Besides, according to good manners, your guests must be at their ease. In this way they could get a sauce stain! Would they be at their ease in this way?

The third rule. Don’t sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese on the top of the pasta and don’t add Parmesan cheese tossing the tagliatelle. It’s better to put a little bowl full of grated cheese accompanied with a teaspoon on the table. So everyone can do what he prefers.

To finish we want to suggest a last detail that can be very useful if you have guests. If you make tagliatelle at home don’t cut them 1 metre long. Have you ever eaten such a long pasta gracefully? Cut them 50-60 cm long.

Are you interested in all our entries? You can find them on this page.

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Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta

Carlo and I have thought in the past days  how we’d like to set up the table for Valentines day.
Here it is our idea! Obviously we have already made it to show you some photos.
We have been involved too much in making the ornaments for this Valentines table and hope it will be the same for you.

At first we think the Valentines table must be set up for both the lovers and so …. read below how we made a perfect table for two!

Let’s begin with  the colours. We decided  to express the preferred colours of everyone and so we chose a neutral background:  clear place mats as you can see in the photos.

Then we  cut out  a  rectangle from a thick paper in the colour that  everyone prefer. We chose orange and  light blue. Look at the photo for more details.
Then we played with the colours: a light blue glass on the orange place mat, an orange glass on the light blue place mat. Carlo and I like different colours but at the end the couple wins and the cards …. get mixed up!

Look now at the rectangular papers in their details. We wrote some words  with 3D colours by Stamperia.  We remembered the way by which we closed our letters or SMS.  What about this idea? it’s nice, isn’t it?

In the photo you can also see a serving dish in which some little pizzas are arranged. The little pizzas compose the initials: L and C in our case. Another  reference to the couple … Read more about the Valentines menu based on the couple initials we have created in the last week.

At the end we show you the place cards or better the menu cards.

Place cards aren’t necessary in a table for two but in this case the place card is really a different  menu card.
We made the  place cards  with two little glasses in orange and light blue colours. We filled them with sand: orange sand in the light blue  glass and light blue sand in the orange glass.
Then we cut out  four little rectangles from the same  thick paper we used before: two in orange colour and two in light blue colour. We glued two themed Valentines images on two of these rectangles. We wrote the dinner menu on the other two rectangles. Then we glued them two by two leaving a little space in the side below: this space is necessary to insert a coloured plastic toothpick. Look at the photos for more details.

What about this table? We think is cheap, easy to do  and first of all you can set up together this table. To be together …
But we think it’s a real surprise if it is made only by her boyfriend or his girlfriend.

Greetings from Italy

Carlo & Loretta

The Italian Taste team