Spring onions turn out to be another ingredient that means something different in America – they would call these Scallions. The intended ingredient is probably closer to a Continental Salad Onion. Alas, I only realised this at the point of cooking, so here we are.

It’s fine but I’m not sure the spring onions improve it.

Very similar to the previous recipe but with more butter and the cheese integrated into the sauce. This is a better treatment but the high fat content means you’d want to eat it sparingly.

Again, I used tinned peeled plum tomatoes.

I used tinned peeled plum tomatoes to save having to cook some tomatoes in their own juices for 45 minutes.

You can taste that the milk is there, but it doesn’t really add much to the dish.

Reasonably tasty (the tomato stops the béchemel from being bland).

The recipe calls for tomato purée; I used what the book would usually call tomato paste, because the quantity involved is so small.

Again, I struggled to brown this at a moderate heat (although in this case I didn’t even manage to melt the cheese). Either using a fan oven is the issue or the temperature needs to be higher.

Be sure to start the garlic first, otherwise it’s difficult to keep the sauce consistency correct while waiting for the garlic to soften. If the garlic is insufficiently softened then it won’t blend well.

Made here with spaghetti.

I only allowed minimal browning as I ran out of patience – it takes ages.

Doesn’t reheat well but it pretty good when fresh.

Quite nice.

A smaller baking dish would have been sufficient.

Made here with spaghetti.

The sour cream gives it a bit more of an edge.

Again, probably needed more paprika.

The sauce could probably have done with less flour (there is no quantity specified).

Possibly needed more paprika as well, it got lost.

Again, whisking the single portion is a bit fiddly.

Works well enough.

Managed not to photograph this one.

Tasty enough, but the sauce is difficult to whisk when scaled down to a single portion.

In contrast to 122, this probably needed more cheese.

In this case the pasta is tossed in the butter and the cheese is served separately.

The advice to melt the butter by placing it next to the heat probably works fine with a gas hob, but is terrible with a ceramic one.

Seems to have too much cheese (or my conversion into grams is bad).

Works well.

Pictured here with some shells I needed to use up.

A simple dish of pasta mixed with cream and cheese. Quite tasty.

Pictured here with spaghetti.

It’s fine, and probably better if you like pineapple more than I do.

The prunes were chopped mechanically, and possibly slightly over chopped.

Benefits from a generous sprinkling of sugar.

The grill helps the raisins, but I’m not sure it improves the pasta.

Made here with Tagliatelle.

I used a blackcurrant conserve because I didn’t fancy buying an entire jar of cherry/apple jam just for this one recipe.

The quantity of jam required was unclear, so I don’t know if this is the correct consistency.

Shown here unstrained, as it was clear straining it would be a fool’s errand with the sieve I had.

Flavours aren’t bad.

Tastes like Christmas, but again, far too sweet.

Smells like popcorn when cooking, but easy to overdo (crushing the walnuts finer may help it mix better).

Far too sweet for me, with 1 ounce of sugar per portion.

There didn’t seem to be much sauce with this – some of that might be due to using the same pan for frying the aubergines and making the sauce, with the tomato drying out when it hit the pan.

There’s also slightly too much pasta, which didn’t help.

Despite all that, quite tasty.

The proportions here may be way off base – the recipe calls for a 2-3 inch piece of bread interior and it’s not entirely clear what that means. This is compounded by scaling the recipe down into a single portion.

I suspect there should be more bread and more olive oil, but the walnuts get lost in here as it is.

The walnuts pictured here are slightly burnt (they cooked more quickly than expected).

Simple but reasonably effective.

A shame, I would have liked to try this.

This actually works quite well, and the small amount of tomato sauce really lifts it.

Drier than the previous recipes, possibly because I wasn’t paying attention and let it dry out a bit. This may also be why the tomatoes got lost.

Made here with dried egg noodles.

As ever, the tomatoes make this much better.

Made with super chestnut mushrooms.

It’s fine.

I used white button mushrooms instead of Chiodini for availability reasons.

More of a soup than a sauce (getting the quantity of water right is tricky). I used fresh tagliatelle as a substitute for laganelle (though it seems slightly odd that we’re having egg noodles in Pasta with Vegetables).

Reasonably tasty but having to soak the chickpeas is a bit of a faff.

I’ve used passata for the tomato purée called for in the recipe (because what we call tomato purée is the book’s tomato paste).

Again, red lentils don’t work so well.

The tricky bit seems to be getting the “generous” quantity of water right. Too much, and the mixture doesn’t come out thick and soupy. Too little, and there won’t be sufficient water to cook the pasta in at the end.

I’ve tried these with green lentils, red lentils and what Waitrose simply calls “lentils”. Red lentils don’t really work here.

Made using tinned beans instead of fresh, which probably didn’t help.

Pictured here with Fusilli.

A bit tedious, mainly because the beans need to be skinned after they are removed from the pods. Do not be tempted to skip this step, as when fried the beans will force themselves out of the skins, and you’ll have to skin them while they’re very hot.

This isn’t that, it is instead a tomato sauce with apple juice added (I used ready made pressed apple juice instead of pressing my own apples to save time).

Surprisingly, this actually works really well.

Serviceable, but unexciting.

Made here with fusilli, and eaten warmer than expected due to poor scheduling on the day I made it.

I added a bit too much water so the soup was quite thin, and there was too much of it (I had some as a starter later in the week).

Couldn’t find any chervil, so this was made with just parsley.

Pictured here with fusilli and optional cheese.

An improvement on the previous recipe, mainly due to frying the potatoes.

Boiling potatoes is about the worst way to prepare them, and as such, this is not great (without the tomatoes, it would be even worse).

Made using bought Orecchiette.

A reasonable starter.

The olives give it a bit of a lift compared to the previous recipe.

Pictured here with the optional cheese.

Shown here with spaghetti.

Works well as a starter.

Much more like it. Tastes better and is easier to cook properly.

Not appealing at the best of times, and I also managed to upset my digestive system with this one.

Would not recommend.

Be careful when roasting the peppers in order to peel them – too much roasting means the peppers collapse and it’s difficult to stuff them without them falling apart.

Despite that, very tasty.

I used tinned tomatoes for this, which may mean there was more juice than intended. Nevertheless, I like this more than the version without tomatoes.

Despite the addition of balsamic vinegar, not massively flavour-some (maybe I need to buy better peppers).

Remove the capers and parsley along with the peppers, otherwise they will burn.

Very similar to the previous recipe.

I managed to massively overcook the garlic (hence the black bits in the photo).

Slightly better with cheese.

It’s fine.

If I remember rightly the parsley was somewhat overdone.

Spaghetti is substituting for the bavette.

Managed to overcook the aubergine, so it was a bit bland.

Despite this still being under Pasta with Vegetables, the recipe calls for cheese.

Garlic and chilli give it some additional flavour.

Works surprisingly well.

Made here with fusilli rather than conchiglie.

Not sure it really works.

Not bad.

Not really my thing, but it works well enough.

Managed not to photograph this one.

Pictured here with Bucatini.

Slightly odd.

There may be more tomato here than is strictly necessary.

Very good.

The breadcrumbs have a surprising amount of influence on the flavour of the dish.

The bought orecchiette are smaller and thinner than the ones I made, and all the better for it.

Again, a slight improvement.

This variation is topped with cheese.

Broccoli rabe is not widely available here, but kale seems to be a reasonable substitute.

These orecchiette are too large and thick, but otherwise not too bad.

Again, any resemblance to actual Minuicch is purely coincidental.

I used a metal drinking straw to shape this, but the pasta was not sufficiently dried out when doing this; as a result, the pieces deformed when removing them from the straw.

This was compounded by storing the pasta before it had dried out, so it stuck together and had to be reshaped.

Possibly served with too much rocket.

This is where it would be useful if the book had pictures – I have no idea what (if any) resemblance to actual cavatielli my pasta has.

They would probably benefit from being thinner.

Unsurprisingly, this mostly tastes of onions.

Once again, if I’m not mistaken, this recipe contained tomato paste.

Instead of nice layers it ended up as more of a heap, but there was less burning than the previous recipe.

Again, better reheated as it softens some of the drier pasta.

Make sure the tomatoes are on top as exposed pasta burns in the oven. Arranging this requires the baking dish to be a very specific size or everything falls apart.

Better reheated, which softens some of the burnt pasta.

It’s fine, I guess, but a bit of a faff.

Made here with Rigatoni.

As I recall it was crispy and ever so slightly sweet.

The recipe doesn’t specify which vinegar, so I used Balsamic.

A very thick sauce, but quite tasty.

A bit of a faff, but it works.

I used Bucatini as Maccheroncini was not available.

Speculating wildly, the fact that they were tinned olives in brine may have been the issue, in the all the liquid probably went down the sink when I drained the jars.

Once again, if I’m not mistaken, this recipe contained tomato paste.

I overdid the mint when I tried this.

These onions were a bit large, so it’s mostly onion with not much tomato flavor. I also managed to burn some onto my pan. Sigh.

Once again, if I’m not mistaken, this recipe contained tomato paste.

Much more body that the others. This works.

Adds a subtle flavour to the dish.

An odd one. The breadcrumbs absorb all the moisture from the tomatoes, so the quantity of sauce produced is really small. Not that great.

Quite spicy, at least the way I did it.

Tastes much as you’d expect.

Not sure I’m a fan of the capers.

The portion here looks small because I used half as much flour as was required.

Pictured here with rather more sauce than makes sense for one portion.

An important base recipe for later. Made here with tinned tomatoes.

Pictured here with fusilli. The onion flavour is quite strong.

Pictured here with spaghetti (which is probably not an improvement). Not sure balsamic was the best choice of vinegar either.

Very garlicky.

This may take some time.

Some recipes will not be attempted, either because the ingredients are unobtainable (I have no idea where I would buy camel) or because the recipe does not appeal (contains brain).

Some recipes may be scaled down. For some recipes I may use a different type of pasta to the recommended one.

Photos are taken by me. They may have The Guardian or Private Eye in the background.