5 Easy Pasta Recipes Recommended by 5 Chefs

At home, far from the kitchens where everything is prepared to perfection, how do chefs prepare their pasta? Do they have sophisticated recipes, like the gourmet meals they know the secrets of? Imagine that chefs also appreciate pasta with butter and Gruyere, pesto, or any classic creation that we would make at home. Today, they share with us their pasta recipes, while remaining simple. After all, pasta is the symbol of the easy meal par excellence. So let’s not complicate its preparation, but rather develop the possibilities of creation. The key ingredient that chefs often come up with? Cooking water. Loaded with the starch from the pasta during cooking, this water is perfect for binding and increasing the flavors between the pasta and its seasoning. As for the choice between olive oil or butter in pasta, butter seems to be unanimous. At least, to bring the main taste to the pasta, and reserve the olive oil for the final touch. Pierre Augé, who shares his recipe for creamy lemon pasta, explains his vision: “Olive oil brings good fat and roundness to the dough. It is therefore good to add a drizzle on the final preparation once on the plate. Otherwise, butter remains better for bringing taste, since it binds better to the pasta than olive oil.”

Jean-Philippe Perol’s Salted Butter Pasta

Chef Jean-Philippe Perol cooks at the Marguerite 1606 restaurant (at Domaine Reine Margot Paris Issy – MGallery Collection). For him, “after cooking, drain the pasta and keep the cooking water. Pour it into a saucepan, add a few pieces of salted butter and add the drained pasta. Let everything emulsify over low heat so that the butter directly coats the pasta (the mixture of starchy water and salted butter will bind the pasta and delight the taste buds once in the mouth)”. Thanks to this preparation with salted butter, you will not need to add additional salt.

Calum Franklin’s sheep’s cheese and pepper pasta

Calum Franklin (British chef who recently opened his first English brasserie, Public House in Paris), suggests using the pasta cooking water (loaded with starch) to make a simple sauce. “Pour half a ladle of pasta cooking water into a mixture of egg yolk, grated sheep’s cheese and lots of pepper. The water will dilute the resulting sauce with the cheese melting in contact with the heat and the runny egg yolk.” A delight!

Charles Boixel’s prawn pasta

With 17 years of experience in the kitchens of great starred chefs, Charles Boixel is now at the head of his own restaurant, the Café César in Clichy. He suggests recovering carcasses of prawns to flavor the pasta. “Sweat the carcasses in cognac and use the resulting liquid to bind the pasta together”. To do this, “shell the prawns, keep the carcasses to brown them in the pan with butter and a cap of cognac. Cream (with crème fraîche) to the height, (until you can no longer see the carcasses) and leave to cook for about twenty minutes. Blend then pour this sauce over the pasta, adding the prawns cut into pieces, zucchini browned in the pan and crushed pistachios”.

Pierre Augé’s Creamy Lemon Pasta

At the head of the restaurant “La Maison de Petit Pierre” in Béziers and Top Chef 2014 title holder, Pierre Augé invites you to change pasta with butter and grated Gruyère. To do this and stay in line with basic recipes, prepare pasta with cream and lemon. “In a saucepan, bring 300g of 30% fat cream to the boil, add the zest and grated peel of a whole lemon, a pinch of salt and let the preparation thicken. Then add chives or coriander according to your preference, and dip the pasta in the mixture.” You now have superb creamy lemon pasta!

Marc Fontanne’s Pasta with Chicken Broth

Michelin-starred in Provence and head of La Table de L’Orangerie (the gourmet restaurant at the 5-star Le Château de Fonscolombe hotel), chef Marc Fontanne shares a simple pasta recipe that requires patience. For a preparation that will bring new flavors to pasta simply cooked in water, prepare a chicken stock. “Keep the carcass of the last roast chicken that you recently prepared. Place it in the oven at 180°C. Once nicely browned, put it in a saucepan, cover it with water (about 1l of water) and cook for 3 hours to fully recover the flavor of the carcass (and the collagen present in the poultry bones). To flavor the stock, add a carrot cut into three, an onion and garlic cut in half to the saucepan. Once the time is up, filter the preparation through a sieve to keep only the liquid from the stock. Before cooking the pasta in this water, “prepare the pasta like a risotto. Brown chopped onions with a clove of garlic and a sprig of thyme in olive oil and butter. Pour in a capful of white wine and reduce until dry (until there is no more white wine). Once the onions are candied, add the pasta (still dry) to the pan, and pour in the chicken stock! Let it cook while the pasta cooks, and once on the plate, add some parmesan and heavy cream, wonderful!”