Italian pasta company Pasta Evangelists has started delivering in Cambridge

Co-founded by Prue Leith CBE, Giles Coren and William Sitwell, Pasta Evangelists provides boxes of fresh, artisanal pasta and the finest sauces across homes in the UK.

Another co-founder, Chris Rennoldson, is an alumnus of Pembroke College and was also a postgraduate student at Leiths Cookery School.

Based in London, the firm has recently started delivering in Cambridge, inviting residents of the city to prepare authentic pasta dishes in five minutes.

Established in 2017, each Pasta Evangelists box includes freshly handmade pasta, an authentic Italian sauce, garnishes and instructions on how to prepare the dish.

Pasta Evangelists chefs use only the finest seasonal ingredients and, whenever possible, Italian produce.

All the pastas and the sauces are handmade in London and dishes include pappardelle with pork stracotto and cavolo nero, crab tortelloni with a crustacean bisque, malloreddus alla campidanese, and paccheri alla norma. A new menu is launched each week.

The box arrived at my home tightly packed in a cotton wool-like material. Inside it were various plastic bags containing the ingredients and what looked like an ice pack to keep everything fresh.

Although everything was beautifully presented, looking at all the packets was initially a bit daunting, but once I realised where everything went it was fine.

The two dishes I’d been sent were the fusilli with basil pesto with green beans, potatoes and pine nuts and the paccheri with beef ragu, alla genovese.

Both were very quick and easy to make. I simply heated the sauce in one pan and boiled the pasta in another for three to four minutes – much less time than the 10 minutes usually required.

With the pesto, I had to add the green beans and potatoes to the boiling water for 30 seconds, transfer the fusilli to the pesto and then added the pine nuts and parmesan cheese.

The paccheri was done in the same way, though with meat to add instead of beans and potatoes. This dish was my favourite of the two.

A slightly new, solely Italian-themed twist to the idea of delivered ingredients and cooking instructions – which seems to becoming increasingly popular – and there should be enough variety here to appeal to Italian food lovers in Cambridge.

pastaevangelists.com