Italian Australian Style

Craving Italian, hungry for variety and new eating experience, I pulled up Italian Cookbook No. 2.

I should have known better than have faith in a cookbook with such a generic name, no author and published by The Australian Women's Weekly Home Library - nothing could be further apart than those two countries.

And to intensify the weirdness, a dish that I have never seen or heard of before - Fettuccine with Italian Sausages and Olives - was attempted.

Here's how the adventure went.

You couldn't dream of better ingredients for dinner - pasta with hot Italian sausages, lots of mushrooms, fresh Asiago cheese, garlic.

I started following the recipe by cooking the sausages.

More promising flavours poured in.

Parsley, orange zest, olives - this is bound to be good...until it was time to add 300 ml cream and cook until it was reduced to a third.

More like reduced to no sauce and no flavour.

At this point, I gave up on the Australians' approach to cooking Italian, pulled out a can of Italian tomato paste, prepared a thick sauce and added it to the pot.

And hope there was as I got more excited about my meal. I chopped off some jardin lettuce and made a mock caesar salad (no eggs - just lots of lemon, oil and garlic).

Time for the litmus taste - tasting my production.

No matter how much asiago cheese I added, the dish was simply tasteless.

But I am glad of my delicious jardin lettuce salad - kept the hunger away and the dinner healthier.

Anyone wants this cookbook?