Mastering Pasta

Award-winning chef Marc Vetri wanted to write his first book about pasta. Instead, he wrote two other acclaimed cookbooks and continued researching pasta for ten more years. Now, the respected master of Italian cuisine finally shares his vast knowledge of pasta, gnocchi, and risotto in this inspiring, informative primer featuring expert tips and techniques, and more than 100 recipes. Vetri’s personal stories of travel and culinary discovery in Italy appear alongside his easy-to-follow, detailed explanations of how to make and enjoy fresh handmade pasta. Whether you’re a home cook or a professional, you’ll learn how to make more than thirty different types of pasta dough, from versatile egg yolk dough, to extruded semolina dough, to a variety of flavored pastas—and form them into shapes both familiar and unique. In dishes ranging from classic to innovative, Vetri shares his coveted recipes for stuffed pastas, baked pastas, and pasta sauces. He also shows you how to make light-as-air gnocchi and the perfect dish of risotto. Loaded with useful information, including the best way to cook and sauce pasta, suggestions for substituting pasta shapes, and advance preparation and storage notes, Mastering Pasta offers you all of the wisdom of a pro. For cooks who want to take their knowledge to the next level, Vetri delves deep into the science of various types of flour to explain pasta’s uniquely satisfying texture and how to craft the very best pasta by hand or with a machine. Mastering Pasta is the definitive work on the subject and the only book you will ever need to serve outstanding pasta dishes in your own kitchen.

“If you’re obsessed with gnocchi and all of it’s easy-to-make relative shapes, there’s no better book on the market.” —Epicurious Pasta is the ultimate comfort food, and making it by hand is a favorite project for weekend cooks. From rising culinary star and 2012 Food & Wine Best New Chef Jenn Louis, this book includes more than sixty-five recipes for hand-shaped traditional pastas and dumplings, along with deeply satisfying sauces to mix and match. Louis shares her recipes and expertise in hand-forming beloved shapes such as gnocchi, orecchiette, gnudi, and spatzli as well as dozens of other regional pasta specialties appearing for the first time in an English-language cookbook. With photos of finished dishes and step-by-step shaping sequences, this beautiful book is perfect for DIY cooks and lovers of Italian food. “The luxurious sauce recipes in the last chapter are worth the price of admission alone and feature traditional ragús of lamb, rabbit, porcini, tomato, beef, and wild boar. This single-focus cookbook is written with both authority and a passion for ‘some of the most soulful Italian food we can eat.’” —Publishers Weekly “With passion and authenticity, Jenn Louis has captured the diversity of the regional pastas, from Trentino-Alto Adige, down to Puglia, and over to Sardinia. This book is a must-read for anyone looking to learn about true Italian food and culture.” —Marc Vetri, award-winning chef of Vetri Family restaurants “She’s gone to the source and rubbed floury elbows with nonnas and professional cooks alike, and then written the Italian dumpling gospel. What a delightful—and important—primer she’s given us!” —Julia Della Croce, author of The Pasta Book

JAMES BEARD AWARD NOMINEE • A stylish, transporting pasta master class from New York City’s premier pasta chef, with recipes for 40 handmade pasta shapes and 100 Italian American, regional Italian, and modern dishes IACP AWARD FINALIST • “Missy Robbins brings her extraordinary knowledge and generous heart to teach us to prepare the pastas that made her restaurants, Lilia and Misi, two of the best in the world.”—Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa ONE OF THE TEN BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe • ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: Minneapolis Star Tribune, Glamour, Food52, Epicurious Food trends come and go, but pasta holds strong year after year. Despite its humble ingredients—made of merely flour and water or flour and eggs—the magic, rituals, and art of pasta making span over five centuries. Two ingredients are turned into hundreds of stuffed, rolled, extruded, dried, stamped, and hand-cut shapes, each with its own unique provenance and enrobed in a favored sauce. New York City chef Missy Robbins fell in love with Italian food and pasta twenty-five years ago. She has been cooking, researching, and studying her way across Italy ever since, which led her to open two of America’s most renowned pasta restaurants, Lilia and Misi. With illustrated step-by-step recipes for handmaking forty of the most versatile pasta shapes and one hundred recipes for Italian American, regional Italian, and Robbins’s own best pasta dishes, plus two dozen vegetable sides, this is the hard-working manual for home cooks who aspire to master the art of pasta cooking. Whether making pasta sheets for lasagna or stamping out pasta “coins” for Corzetti with Goat Cheese and Asparagus—or even buying handmade pasta to make Tagliatelle with Porcini, Rosemary, and Garlic—Robbins provides all the inspiration, instruction, and encouragement required to make pasta exceptionally well. Evocatively photographed with nearly 100 full-color mouthwatering photos of pasta dishes and twenty images from Italy, this is a richly illustrated ode to the ingredients, recipes, and craft that have made pasta the most popular fare of a beloved cuisine.

Making handmade, home-made pasta has never been easier!

*THE JAMES BEARD MEDIA AWARD WINNER FOR BEST PHOTOGRAPHY* "Evan Funke's respect for tradition and detail makes American Sfoglino the perfect introduction to the fresh egg pastas of Emilia Romagna. It's bold in its simplicity and focus." — Missy Robbins, chef/owner of Lilia and MISI Forget your pasta machine and indulge in the magic of being a sfoglino with the help of the rich imagery and detailed instructions provided by Evan Funke and American Sfoglino. A comprehensive guide to making the best pasta in the world: In this debut cookbook from Evan Funke, he shares classic techniques from his Emilia Romagna training and provides accessible instructions for making his award winning sfoglia (sheet pasta) at home. With little more than flour, eggs, and a rolling pin, you too can be a sfoglino (a pasta maker) and create traditional Italian noodles that are perfectly paired with the right sauces. Features recipes for home cooks to recreate 15 classic pasta shapes, spanning simple pappardelle to perfect tortelloni. Beginning with four foundational doughs, American Sfoglino takes readers step by step through recipes for a variety of generous dishes, from essential sauces and broths, like Passata di Pomodoro (Tomato Sauce) and Brodo di Carne (Meat Broth) to luscious Tagliatelle in Bianco con Prosciutto (Tagliatelle with Bacon and Butter) and Lasagna Verde alla Bolognese (Green Bolognese Lasagna) in this treasure trove of a recipe book. Includes stories from Italy and the kitchen at Funke's Felix Trattoria that add the finishing touches to this pasta masterclass, while sumptuous James Beard-award winning photographs and a bold package offer a feast for the eyes. Evan Funke is a master pasta maker and the chef owner of Felix Trattoria in Venice, California. Katie Parla is a food writer and IACP award winning author whose work has appeared in numerous outlets, including the New York Times, Food & Wine, and Saveur. Eric Wolfinger is a James Beard Award winning food photographer. Makes an excellent gift idea for any pasta aficionado or avid Italian cook.

"Basic recipes and key techniques then illustrate dozens indispensable culinary building blocks, such as how to judge when a pasta dough is mixed just right or how to dice an onion with ease. Troubleshooting tips show you what can go wrong and how to fix it without having to start all over again. Next the master recipes lead you step-by-step, with friendly text and instructive photographs, through every stage of preparation. These recipes include helpful advice other cookbooks assume you already know, and explain how to taste and season a dish as you go - one of the most valuable kitchen secrets you can learn. The shorter recipes and variations in each chapter encourage you to continue practicing your newfound skills, building your repertory and your confidence at the same time. Finally, a guide to equipment and a glossary of ingredients round out your comprehensive pasta-making course."--BOOK JACKET.

A revolutionary guide to making delicious pizza at home, offering a variety of base doughs so that your pizza will turn out perfect no matter what kind of oven or equipment you have. Pizza remains America's favorite food, but one that many people hesitate to make at home. In Mastering Pizza, award-winning chef Marc Vetri tackles the topic with his trademark precision, making perfect pizza available to anyone. The recipes—gleaned from years spent researching recipes in Italy and perfecting them in America—have a variety of base doughs of different hydration levels, which allow home cooks to achieve the same results with a regular kitchen oven as they would with a professional pizza oven. The book covers popular standards like Margherita and Carbonara while also featuring unexpected toppings such as mussels and truffles—and even a dessert pizza made with Nutella. With transporting imagery from Italy and hardworking step-by-step photos to demystify the process, Mastering Pizza will help you make pizza as delicious as you find in Italy.

From acclaimed Philadelphia chef Marc Vetri comes a celebration of handcrafted, regional Italian cooking that advocates a hands-on, back-to-the-basics approach to cooking. Slow-cooked meats, homemade breads, and flavorful pastas are the traditional comfort-food classics that Italians have been roasting, baking, curing, and making in their own kitchens for generations--dishes that people actually want to cook and eat. Home cooks of every skill level will revel in the 120 recipes, such as sweet Fig and Chestnut Bread, rich Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi, savory Slow-Roasted Lamb Shoulder, and fragrant Apple Fritters. But Rustic Italian Food is much more than just a collection of recipes. With detailed, step-by-step instructions for making terrines, dry-cured salami, and cooked sausage; a thorough guide to bread and pasta making; and a primer on classic Italian preserves and sauces, Rustic Italian Food is also an education in kitchen fundamentals. In this book Marc Vetri connects us directly to the essence of Italian food.