Self-taught chef Fiona Afshar, who goes by cookingwithfiona on Instagram, brings a stylish flair to traditional Italian cooking. Afshar’s inventive use of colorful pasta with funky bold prints and patterns makes her recipes look more like edible art than dinner. Using an ordinary pasta maker and her wits, Afshar can whip up red and yellow flower printed lasagne or nature-inspired ravioli.
The pasta pro makes creating these elaborate dishes look easy. To make a print, Afshar uses thin sheets of pasta in the desired colors. In this example, it’s yellow, black and beige. She takes a flower cookie cutter to the beige pasta sheet until it’s covered in the pattern. Then, she places the patterned sheet over a yellow one.
Next, she uses a circle cookie cutter to make floral discs out of the black pasta. She then places each disc at the center of each flower on the sheet. Afshar then uses a rolling pin to merge the three pasta sheets. Finally, she runs the big sheet through a pasta maker. The finished product is one large pasta sheet with yellow and black flowers.
To make her signature colored doughs Afshar uses superfood powders. Goldenberry makes yellow, beets make red, panda leaf makes green, sweet potato makes purple and butterfly pea makes blue.
“Fusilli pasta were originally developed in Southern Italy by rolling and setting fresh spaghetti around thin rods to dry. I’m tossing these with some mushrooms, garlic and white wine,” Afshar wrote in a photo caption.
The image featured long fusilli pasta strands in bright pink, purple, green and yellow.
“I’m in absolute awe of the amount of color you put into your dishes. Good should always look this colorful in my opinion,” one Instagram user wrote.
“Omg this looks divine!” another said.
“This is so beautiful and amazing! You are a true artist!” one person added.
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