IntroductionI opened Fiorella pasta bar in Philadelphia in March 2020, right when the pandemic hit. Crazy timing! But the restaurant survived.
The original idea came from going to David Chang’s first Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York City’s East Village. Chefs were making cool, highlevel food right there in front of you. It had such a great vibe. Over the years, l looked at the pasta stations at my restaurants and thought, “We could do that . . . the pasta station alone could be a restaurant. A pasta bar!”
Of course, the pandemic hit the month we opened. After three weeks of success, we closed and pivoted to become a market, selling things like sausage ragù and fresh noodles so people could make the dishes at home. We also made videos demonstrating how to do it. That taught us a valuable lesson: Anyone can enjoy the magic of pasta at home. You just need to get a handle on the process. Those pandemic videos and our streamlined pasta-making instructions were the inspiration for this book.
Vetri Cucina provided everything else. We’ve been turning out beautiful pasta dishes in that intimate restaurant for more than twenty-five years, honing our methods and exploring new flavor combinations. Vetri has only thirty-five seats. Fiorella opened with just fourteen seats. Both restaurants are tiny by today’s standards. Both have proven you don’t need a big restaurant with a fancy kitchen to make great pasta dishes. Italian cooks have been doing it in tiny home kitchens for centuries. You can do it in your kitchen any night of the week. Seriously!
The Pasta Book shares everything I’ve learned over the past thirty years, like how to simplify things so making pasta is fun and how to get creative with your own new flavor combinations. I cover getting organized, what kind of flour to use, how to pair pasta and sauces . . . everything you need to know to up your pasta game. I know a lot of home cooks just make dried pasta. That’s cool. I show you how to buy good dried pasta and how to make recipes with dried noodles instead of fresh.
Along the way you’ll hear about my philosophy of pasta and the underlying logic of everything from cacio e pepe to lasagna Bolognese. You see, the beautiful thing about pasta is that it’s a repeating pattern, like petals on a flower. Each dish of pasta is built from the exact same blueprint, an infinitely repeatable process that’s given birth to endless ribbons, strings, strands, sheets, tubes, and pockets with different sauces and condiments in various countries around the globe for millennia. It’s amazing!
Once you see this pattern and start moving to the rhythm, every step gets easier. Then it’s like dancing. Maybe you make a sauce on the weekend. You mix up some dough in the morning, then cook the noodles that night. Knowing the fundamental steps unlocks the door to endless creativity. That’s when it gets fun! You can play around with different flavors, change up the shapes, and invent your own signature dishes.
It all comes together here in more than eighty recipes, including basic pasta doughs and shapes, plus my most-requested dishes. We show you how to make easy weeknight meals like Spaghetti alla Carbonara (page 206) and Eggplant Lasagnetta (page 111). When you want to go the extra mile, there’s a whole chapter of Next Level Pasta (page 252), including things like Fusilli with Clams, Cauliflower, and Speck Bread Crumbs (page 257) and a couple sweet pastas like Gnocchi di Susine with Cinnamon Bread Crumb Butter (page 279). Even these “next-level” dishes are doable and satisfying to make at home; they just have more depth and layers of flavor.
The recipes are arranged, somewhat loosely, from easiest to more complex. They start with dried pasta dishes, then move to simple fresh pastas like tagliolini and on to stuffed pastas like half-moons and agnolotti. If you’re new to making pasta, start at the beginning of each chapter. Start at the beginning of the book for that matter! The first couple of chapters are packed with things that recipes don’t tell you, and the vegetable pastas (page 94) are the easiest ones in the book. Or spin the wheel and dip into whatever looks good to you. Soon you’ll be experiencing my favorite thing in the whole world . . . that shudder going through me after biting into the perfect marriage of pasta and sauce, a singular bite that starts out chewy and flavorful, then goes creamy and ethereal as the noodle disappears on your tongue as if it were never there. Pure magic!
Copyright © 2025 by Marc Vetri and David Joachim. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
