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By Lea Manto-Beltran
FILIPINOS have come to love pasta
as a people. An all-time favorite in every birthday, christening and
even office parties is the all-too familiar red spaghetti, which
varies in recipe from family to family.
Though the Filipino spaghetti is
very different from its Italian original, it nevertheless paved the
way for craving for real deal Italian dishes. Today, the words—and
tastes of—pesto and puttanesca are also part of the Filipino’s
food dictionary.
Still, the sauces may be the same
but the pasta used by Filipinos and Italians are literally and
figuratively worlds apart. How? “The pasta we Filipinos use is
store-bought. It isn’t fresh like the Italian’s, which absorbs
and retains flavors better, as well feels different in the mouth,”
is the answer provided by Italianni’s restaurant resident chef
Junjun de Ocampo.
A pasta lover and connoisseur,
Ocampo naturally decided to offer fresh, homemade pasta at the long
running Italianni’s restaurant chain, with three new sauces.
For the health-conscious,
there’s Smoked Salmon and Asparagus, a classic combination of
smoked salmon and green asparagus in a tasty creamy seafood tomato
sauce.
For fish lovers, there’s the
Mediterranean Grilled Fish, a dish of spice-marinated fish fillet,
grilled, and topped over eggplant puttanesca sauce.
For seafood lovers, there’s
Grilled Shrimp with Spinach Fettuccini in asparagus and basil cream
sauce.
And for those who want their
meat, there’s the Baked Pasta Roll, which comes as dish of crisp,
baked pasta sheets, filled with mushrooms, bell peppers, Italian
sausage and meatballs, all simmered in hot marinara and basil pesto
sauce.
Diners can choose the kind of
fresh pasta to go with the new sauces: spinach pasta, whole-wheat
pasta, or black pasta.
The fresh pasta dishes are
available at Italianni’s branches in Alabang Town Center,
Glorietta 4, Greenbelt 2, Greenhills, Tomas Morato, Libis, SM
Megamall, SM Mall of Asia and the Gateway Mall.
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