You really can’t go past pasta when it comes to a meal that is delicious, affordable and for which there are so many varieties you can never get bored.

Today, October 25, is World Pasta Day, and to celebrate 9Honey Kitchen caught up with pasta expert Johnny Di Francesco from Italian food empire 400 Gradi.

Di Francesco, 46, has been working in hospitality from the age of 12 and knew early on he wanted to be a restaurateur.

His family moved to Australia when his mother was eight months pregnant with him, and like most migrant families, food and hard work were in their blood.

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“My dad was from Caserta, which is near Naopli, and my mum is from Sicily,” he says.

His hospitality work started as “just a part-time job” to buy “buy myself a pair of Nikes… I kept working in restaurants when I was a kid and had finished high school.”

He did dabble in engineering but lasted “about two days” before quickly returning to hospitality and working with mentor Luigi Besson, who taught him how to make pasta, pizza, all the classics.

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Di Francesco opened his first establishment, a cafe, when he was just 19, a “little place in Brunswick which isn’t there anymore.”

“A lot of kids of my age are taking out loans to buy cars. I was trying to figure out a way to open a business,” he recalls. “It was extremely difficult, but I ended up getting that through.”

He sold his first business and opened the next one, then a pizzeria that went “really, really well” and allowed him to expand into several locations by the time he was 23.

The next phase of his career saw the launch of the 400 Gradi empire, which continues to this day in seven locations across the Australia and one in the US.

At the heart of the excellent pasta, pizza and classic Italian dishes is his love of cooking and food and the best ingredients he can find.

Which brings us to World Pasta Day and Di Francesco go-to recipes. 

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He claims to make the “best gnocchi around” and plenty of his customers would agree.

“Spinach and ricotta gnocchi and pumpkin gnocchi and potato gnocchi, but I learned some really good tricks along the way on how to make the perfect gnocchi all the time,” he explains.

The first step is to choose a “really good potato” which is one that doesn’t have too much sugar in it.

“A lot of people use Desiree potatoes. I use a variety that comes out of Victoria and it’s a potato that Dobson,” he says.

“I’ve been using their potatoes now for about 15 years and I will never change and it’s great because dealing directly with a farm they actually tell me when there’s about six to eight weeks where the variety sort of stops growing and that needs to be substituted.

And you wouldn’t believe we can actually tell the difference when that happens.”

Next, he steams them “on top of a bed of salt” instead of boiling them.

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“There’s another little secret that I do. I only work with cold potato,” he explains.

“When you’re working with cold potato, you’re absorbing less flour. So when you absorb less flour, your potato becomes a lot more soft when you cook it. So it’s not bouncy or chewy.”

Di Francesco combines the potato, ’00’ flour and egg until it feels right. Don’t ask him for exact measurements.

“You’ve got to sort of understand the feel, there’s no real metrics that I use,” he says.

Depending on any additions to the combination such as ricotta or pumpkin, the flour ratio increases.

Di Francesco also loves making tortellini, ravioli, you name it, and all by hand.

”You can buy machines but nothing beats sheeting the pasta out and then filling it, and then, you know, putting another sheet on top or turning it into a topping or cutting it with a mold, really taking the air out carefully so that there’s no air pocket inside.

“You sort of become connected to it. It’s like you’ve you know you’ve created something that you know after you eat it you have this satisfaction of, that was made by my hands. I didn’t go to the supermarket and take it off the shelf.”

His go-to sauce for his gnocchi is a classic tomato or ‘pomodoro’ sauce. Gnocchi Pomodoro is his restaurant’s biggest seller.

To make it, Di Francesco starts with onions which he fries off “really, really slowly” until they are nearly translucent, in standard olive oil.

“Sometimes I put garlic, sometimes I don’t put garlic. It just depends how I feel.”

Next he adds the tomato which he adds whole and cooks down.

“And I never ever blend the tomato ever,” he says.

“That’s the worst thing you can ever do to a tomato because all you’re doing is transferring bitterness from the young seeds. So I always let it just break down.”

Then the pasta goes in and at the end, some fresh basil.

Di Francesco finished each of his pasta dishes off with some extra virgin olive oil and good parmesan.

Another pasta dish he loves is Aglio e Olio Pepperoncino.

“That’s garlic, oil, chili, and pasta water.”

He says with this dish it’s all about the technique.

And it’s classified correctly. So this is where the trick is, people stuff that up. Yep.

“The pasta water combined with the oil emulsifies into like a creamy base, but it’s actually not cream,” he says.

For those who love to save some pasta for the following day, Di Francesco says the best way to reheat it is on a stove top with a “little bit of water” or if you need to use a microwave, add a splash of water as well.

“Just add a little bit of water, put it for 30 seconds, take it out, give it a mix, put another 30 seconds in, just keep doing that until it’s hot and you get yourself a beautiful pasta.”