ROMAN MARS:
This is 99% Invisible. I’m Roman Mars. Pasta is one of the greatest foods ever invented. But it can get a little predictable, especially the pasta dishes we make for ourselves. Whether it’s another night of spaghetti or a slightly jazzed up fettuccine Alfredo, it can get boring making the same dish over and over. Our friend Dan Pashman took note of this conundrum and decided to kickstart a pasta revolution.
DAN PASHMAN:
I’m the creator and host of the Sporkful Food Podcast, the inventor of the cascatelli pasta shape, and author of the new cookbook Anything’s Pastable.
ROMAN MARS:
For those who aren’t familiar with the pasta shape that Dan created, it’s called cascatelli. Dan based the creation of cascatelli on three metrics. First, there’s forkability, which is how easy it is to get onto your fork. Second is sauceability–how readily does the sauce adhere to the shape. And finally, there’s toothsinkability–that’s one word–which is how satisfying it is to sink your teeth into.
DAN PASHMAN:
I set out to invent a new shape of pasta that would hopefully be effective at all three of my metrics. And it took three years and a lot of setbacks and was much harder than I anticipated. And I got a lot of doors slammed in my face. But the end result was the shape called cascatelli, which has these two parallel ruffles that protrude from the main body of it. It’s a short shape and the sauce goes in between the ruffles. It holds a lot of sauce, it’s got a lot of interesting textures, and it succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. It’s now in stores across the country, which is still bananas to me. I still buy it in the store even though I don’t have to because I get so excited when I see it there. It was named one of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of the Year. It was on the cover of Time Magazine.
ROMAN MARS:
That’s amazing.
DAN PASHMAN:
Well, it’s a little weird to be in your 40s and already know that you probably are never going to top whatever it is you just did. But there are worse things to be known for. It’s pretty good–inventing a pasta shape.
ROMAN MARS:
The creation of cascatelli is documented in the Sporkful’s Mission Impastable series, which you can find a link to in the show notes. But that is not why Dan is here today. Ever since Dan’s pasta shape went viral and Dan’s pasta dreams came true, a new, unexpected problem emerged.
DAN PASHMAN:
Well, the problem was that I’m getting photo after photo from all over the country and all over the world, and 75% of the photos are cascatelli with tomato sauce, meat sauce, mac and cheese… I mean, maybe a couple of party animals might’ve made pesto. The range was very narrow. It just generally made me a little sad because I just felt like there’s so much more we can be putting on pasta. And it made me realize, even for myself, I had fallen into a red sauce rut. I just wanted to show other people and myself that there’s a lot more that we can and should be putting on our pasta. So that’s when I had the idea for a cookbook.
ROMAN MARS:
That cookbook’s name is Anything’s Pastable: 81 Inventive Pasta Recipes for Saucy People, which is a great title. It came out a few weeks ago, and it’s a bit different than what you’d expect from a pasta cookbook.
DAN PASHMAN:
I set out to try to write a cookbook that would have no traditional Italian pasta sauce recipes in it. There is no recipe for marinara. There’s no Bolognese. There’s no plain old cacio e pepe or carbonara–none of those. I’m not against those dishes. I just feel like the world didn’t need another recipe for those. So that was really my mission–a cookbook of pasta sauces with none of the traditional basic ones that everyone knows.
ROMAN MARS:
What kind of recipes will people find in your book?
DAN PASHMAN:
So first off, we’re pushing far beyond Italian cuisines to take inspiration from the many cuisines ingredients that I love and cook with in my own home. So that means cacio e pepe with chili crisps, kimchi carbonara. Keema Bolognese–the great Indian spiced ground meat dish, keema, mashed up with Bolognese. There’s a dish for a roasted artichoke preserved lemon sauce. A classic Italian thing is artichokes and lemon. They would do lemon juice. Instead, we’re doing preserved lemon, which is a North African, Middle Eastern ingredient–adds more savoriness. So oftentimes it’s not inventing something that’s so out of left field, it’s just taking something that you know and tweaking it a little bit to make it new and different.
ROMAN MARS:
The Sporkful Podcast four-part series about the making of Anything’s Pastable covers all aspects of the design of the cookbook. From the design of the recipes to photos of the food to the thought behind the language used in the recipes, there are a million decisions to be made.
DAN PASHMAN:
I’m sure that 99PI listeners probably are more attuned to the design of a cookbook than the average person. But the things that I never fully considered that you have to think about–things like, “Alright, you’re going to depict this dish…” Now, look, it actually doesn’t require a ton of talent to make food look delicious. Okay, like, turn on Instagram. A lot of people are doing it. But what is difficult is to present a dish in a way that tells you something more about the story behind the food and the person who has written this book. And that is a real craft. And so it’s things like, “Okay, there’s a plate of delicious food. What kind of plate is it on? Is it a wine glass? Is it a pint of beer? Is it fancy silverware? Is the silverware and the plate setting set just so? Or is it a bit askew? Has a bite been taken out of the food? Are there crumbs on the table?” See, I wanted the look of my book to feel lived-in and real. So I wanted a crumpled up napkin here. I wanted a hand coming in and grabbing something. I wanted a bite taken out because my style is accessible. I’m not a fancy chef. I didn’t want it to look like the Four Seasons in the book. I wanted it to look like this could be your house. I mean, to make a photo look like a regular person just sprinkled these crumbs willy-nilly. I mean, there are people with tweezers and paintbrushes arranging the crumbs just so.
ROMAN MARS:
That’s awesome.
DAN PASHMAN:
So you hear a lot of that painstaking work in Episode Four of our series.
ROMAN MARS:
So when you were thinking about these different creative pasta recipes, one of your sources of inspiration was some of the Italian recipes that didn’t make it over and spread through jars across our shelves. Talk about that and what led you to go to Italy to do research other than the fact that that’s such a great scam, man. Hats off.
DAN PASHMAN:
Right. You mean I can go to Italy for work? Okay. So I wanted to go to Italy because I could. But also, yes, I wanted to feature some obscure Italian pasta dishes that I came across in my initial research that are not known in America, in regions of Italy that are not often traveled by tourists from the U.S. And so, one of them is called spaghetti all’assassina that was invented in a city called Bari in the southeastern corner in the heel of the boot of Italy. That’s this spaghetti cooked in a spicy tomato sauce until the sauce almost runs through a paste, and you keep pan frying it until the pasta turns charred and crispy crunchy in parts, golden brown and crispy in other parts, and yet still chewy in a third section of parts. You get all these different incredible textures. It’s phenomenal. But you can’t get it outside Bari. But I also wanted to kind of get a bigger picture view of Italian pasta culture because–look–when I invented cascatelli, people always ask me, “What do the Italians think? They must be shaking their fist at you.” And when I started working on the cookbook–similar question. “What are the Italians going to say?” And I know that there is this sort of stereotype. I think to some degree it’s a bit of a caricature of Italians hating any variation from tradition, even though you could have two grandmas across the street from each other who cook the same dish differently. I was skeptical that Italian food was as set in stone as the people behind that caricature would have you believe. And so I decided to try to go to Italy to see for myself.
ROMAN MARS:
And what you found–and this is the episode that we’re going to play–is that not only is Italian food cuisine very mutable, it’s kind of mind-blowingly recent, the things that we think of as Italian food that has been exported to the U.S. It’s really kind of nuts.
DAN PASHMAN:
Yeah, I’m still… My jaw’s sort of still on the floor. First of all, Italy only became a country about 150 years ago.
ROMAN MARS:
Right.
DAN PASHMAN:
Yes, of course there’s a lot of history in the region that goes back much further, but it was only unified about 150 years ago. For a long time and, to some degree, even still, it was a very regional place and somewhat fractious. And so the idea that there was one way to do things since the dawn of time–it just doesn’t add up.
ROMAN MARS:
Thanks so much, Dan. And we’re going to play the episode.
DAN PASHMAN:
Thanks, Roman.
ROMAN MARS:
Today we’re bringing you the second episode of the Anything’s Pastable series, where Dan Pashman embarks on a trip to Italy. It is a great episode. It is a really fun project. All four episodes of Anything’s Pastable are available right now from The Sporkful. The Anything’s Pastable cookbook is available in bookstores now. And if you want to go back and hear how cascatelli came to be, the Mission Impastable series is linked in the show notes. Here’s Dan Pashman.
DAN PASHMAN:
Previously on Anything’s Pastable… People who come to a cuisine as outsiders might feel less beholden to tradition.
EVAN KLEIMAN:
I think you’re absolutely 100% wrong.
DAN PASHMAN:
I was just thinking about the fact that I am having so much fun testing all these recipes. Janie, what are your thoughts?
JANIE PASHMAN:
This seems like so much work. I am actually like, “Do you really want to do this cookbook?” How many recipes do you want to have?
DAN PASHMAN:
I’m required by my book contract to have 75 to 100 recipes.
JANIE PASHMAN:
Oh, my God.
DAN PASHMAN:
This is my second book, and my first book nobody bought. And if no one buys this book, I’m not going to get a third shot. This is The Sporkful. It’s not for foodies, it’s for eaters. I’m Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. This is Episode Two of Anything’s Pastable, a four-part series giving you the inside story of the making of my first cookbook. By the end, you’ll never look at a cookbook the same way again. Now, if you haven’t listened to Part One yet, please go back and start there. Okay. Let’s get into it. We’ll pick up where we left off. It’s the spring of 2022, and I’m pushing aside my doubts and fully immersing myself in recipe research and development. A lot of the recipes in my book will be things that my recipe developers and I come up with. But in reading through old cookbooks and talking to people who’ve lived in Italy, I’ve also come across a few obscure Italian pasta dishes that seem perfect for my book. They’re mostly unknown, even in Italy, outside their specific regions. They’re pretty easy to make, and they contain surprising twists that really make them stand out from the ones you’ve seen a million times. But these dishes are so obscure that it’s hard to find people in America who know how to make them. I decided that if I’m going to do them right, I have to go on a research trip to Italy. My daughter Emily’s response to that news?
EMILY PASHMAN:
Everything’s like, “Oh my God, the good pasta is in Italy.” Now everybody’s like, “Oh my god, Italy.” Why does it have to be in Italy? What’s so great about Italy?
DAN PASHMAN:
Well, one great thing will be that I can taste these little known dishes in the places they’re from–cooked by the people who know them best. But in addition to researching these dishes, I have a larger goal for this trip. Everyone jokes about how resistant Italians are to any deviation from tradition. With cascatelli, one of the most common questions I got was: “What do the Italians think?” I could anticipate a similar question with this cookbook. What do Italians think of ideas I want to try like kimchi carbonara, mac n dal, and furikake pesto. The obvious answer is they won’t like it because that’s not the way it’s always been done. But I was surprised to learn in my research that one of the pasta dishes I want to go to Italy to learn about was actually only invented about 60 years ago. The notion of a new addition to Italy’s pasta canon hadn’t really occurred to me. I just assumed all the Italian pasta recipes were from ancient times. But this newer dish made me wonder, “How do evolution and innovation happen in a food culture that always seems to be depicted in sepia tones? And where does my book fit into that process?” With those questions in mind, I board a flight to Italy.
FLIGHT ATTENDANT:
It’s a pleasure to welcome you to Rome, where the correct local time is 7:48…
DAN PASHMAN:
In the peak of summer 2022, I arrive in Rome. On my first day, the heat index is 102 degrees. When you walk out the door, it feels like…
KATIE PARLA:
Like a wall of rendered guanciale fat washing over us. It’s really something.
DAN PASHMAN:
I’m about to eat my way across Rome with food writer Katie Parla, an American who’s been living in Italy for 20 years. She’s written multiple cookbooks about Italian cuisine and gives food tours including to folks like Stanley Tucci, Andrew Zimmer, and Action Bronson on their TV shows.
KATIE PARLA:
We’re gonna cut through here. It’s a little bit faster.
DAN PASHMAN:
Katie and I head to lunch. On the way, she explains that Italian food is very regional; there are lots of dishes that are only found in one area and sometimes in only one town. Historically, Rome has been one of the few places where different culinary traditions have mixed. So it’s a good place to explore my larger questions of how Italian pasta culture evolves. We arrive at our first stop, Piatto Romano.
KATIE PARLA:
We’re here because the food is always delicious. They do things that really reflect the location that we’re in.
DAN PASHMAN:
Katie orders us three pasta dishes, a salad, and some wine. And it’s at this restaurant where everything changes for me because Katie drops a pasta bombshell.
KATIE PARLA:
The 20th century is when Italians start eating pasta regularly. Some regions still don’t really consume it in a significant way at all.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Wait. You’re telling me that pasta wasn’t a big thing in Italy until the 1900s?
KATIE PARLA:
That’s right. People in let’s say Basilicata–the region where my family is from–they might’ve eaten pasta on a holiday. If the Duke or the Noble in that town provided flour. There would be a knowledge that pasta existed. But it wasn’t a daily thing.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
That’s surprising to me. I mean, that makes it a relatively new thing.
KATIE PARLA:
Pasta as part of an Italian national identity is a 20th century thing.
DAN PASHMAN:
Katie explains that Italy’s separate regions were just unified into one country in the late 1800s. In the early 1900s, the fascists come to power, and they need to figure out how to feed a growing population. They also want to unite the people under one nationalist identity. They decide the solution to both problems is pasta because it’s cheap and easy to make, and it’s already a staple in some parts of the country. So the fascist government builds pasta factories in regions where there were none before, including in Rome.
KATIE PARLA:
There’s a really great archive of fascist propaganda–everything that you can imagine that they’re trying to promote as elements of a new Italian identity. And pasta really figures into that.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
But it’s just surprising to me because Italians are so protective of pasta.
KATIE PARLA:
Completely. And they’ll tell you it’s authentic and that we’ve been making this for a long time, but it’s often not totally accurate.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Something that I’m trying to sort of figure out how I should go about with this cookbook is that my pasta shape has faced a lot of skepticism from Italians, which is fine–understandable. That being said, the fact that it only has been basically the national dish of Italy for a hundred years makes me feel like it’s a space that is actually more open to new ideas than maybe might seem at first glance.
KATIE PARLA:
Yeah, and Italians might reject it depending on where they’re from. But if it tastes delicious and you keep forcing them to eat it, they can get on board.
DAN PASHMAN:
That evening, Katie and I meet up for dinner at Cesare al Casaletto. I had asked her to show me examples of new ideas in pasta in Rome. Where’s the innovation happening? So she takes me to try chef Leonardo Pia’s deep fried gnocchi with cacio e pepe sauce.
KATIE PARLA:
TBH, it tastes like tater tots.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
I could eat deep fried gnocchi every day forever.
KATIE PARLA:
Also, I would dip these in ranch.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Yes.
DAN PASHMAN:
This deep fried gnocchi with cacio e pepe sauce is incredible. And when Leonardo comes over to our table to chat, he tells me the dish came about because he has these ingredients in the kitchen all the time. One day he decided to combine them. As he says, “This is how a lot of culinary evolution happens.” After the feast, it’s time to call it a night.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
We accomplished a lot today, Katie.
KATIE PARLA:
We did a lot. You’re talking calorically, right?
DAN PASHMAN:
The next day, Katie and I meet up for another dinner. This time trattoria called Armando al Pantheon–Armando at the Pantheon.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Anything else that you feel like we need to–?
KATIE PARLA:
The gricia here is pretty legendary.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Gricia. That’s carbonara without eggs.
KATIE PARLA:
So while that does describe it, it implies that carbonara was first. But in fact, gricia is the OG shepherd’s pasta that’s made with pepper, pecorino, and guanciale. They make theirs with white wine as well. And that’s tossed with pasta. And that was around for…
DAN PASHMAN:
Guanciale is cured pork jowl, similar to bacon but not so smoky–more porky. The server brings the gricia over to our table.
KATIE PARLA:
Buon appetito.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Those are, like, slabs of guanciale.
KATIE PARLA:
Yeah.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
This is outstanding.
KATIE PARLA:
One of my faves.
DAN PASHMAN:
Not only is the pasta perfectly toothsinkable and the guanciale perfectly meaty with crispy edges and the pecorino mounded on top like a perfectly fresh snowfall–but the black pepper they sprinkle on top is cracked whole peppercorns, earthy and fragrant. Looking back, it’s probably the single best pasta dish I ate in Italy. As Katie said, Gricia was a shepherd’s pasta. It first appeared in the Italian countryside. But in the mid1900s, there was a huge migration from the country into cities. That’s where–legend has it–gricia gave birth to its two most famous babies.
KATIE PARLA:
That was around for a really long time before it’s enriched with tomato sauce to make amatriciana and then ultimately enriched with egg in the late ’50s and early ’60s to make carbonara.
DAN PASHMAN:
Wait, carbonara only dates back to the 1950s? Katie’s dropping bombshells left and right. I always assumed the Roman emperors ate carbonara. Turns out my parents are older, and that may not even be the most shocking thing about it. After three epic meals, I say goodbye to Katie and prepare to leave Rome and head south. But before I tell you more about my trip, I want to dive deeper into the history of carbonara because it has a lot to tell us about the evolution of Italian food.
LUCA CESARI:
Grazie, Dan. Per me è un piacere mio.
DAN PASHMAN:
This is Luca Cesari. He’s a food writer and historian based in Bologna. Last year he published a book called The Discovery of Pasta, which has a whole chapter on the history of carbonara. I talked to Luca with the help of an interpreter named Lilia Pino-Blouin.
LILIA PINO-BLOUIN:
“We all thought that carbonara had existed forever and ever since the Middle Ages.”
DAN PASHMAN:
Today, any Italian will tell you that carbonara is a pasta coated in a sauce made from guanciale, raw beaten eggs, pecorino Romano cheese, and black pepper. But Luca says Italians only coalesced around this recipe in the last 20 years. In fact, over the course of carbonara’s history, tons of other ingredients have been used in carbonara. Luca tells me about one recipe printed in Harper’s Bazaar in 1954.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Clams?
LILIA PINO-BLOUIN:
“Chopped clams.”
LUCA CESARI:
Chopped clams, parmesan, and eggs.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
And Luca, what would happen if you went into a restaurant or any nonna’s house in Italy today and said, “I would like traditional carbonara with chopped clams, please”?
LILIA PINO-BLOUIN:
“They would literally take you straight to a mad house. They would put you in restraints and carry you out to a madhouse.”
DAN PASHMAN:
For decades, cream was another common addition to carbonara, even though Luca says most Italians today would clutch their cannolis at the thought. Still, they might find the larger idea that carbonara is so relatively new to be most scandalous. Luca has spent years pouring through newspaper archives, cookbooks, and other pop culture artifacts to confirm this.
LILIA PINO-BLOUIN:
“Before 1949, there’s no trace of a pasta dish known as carbonara.”
DAN PASHMAN:
Luca says there were earlier dishes that might’ve been forerunners to carbonara–like gricia, which I mentioned earlier. Based on his research, he believes carbonara likely came about when American soldiers were in Rome at the end of World War II. American rations of canned bacon and eggs made their way into Italian kitchens.
LILIA PINO-BLOUIN:
“And people might’ve had the idea of mixing it in with pasta and probably some cheese. And then this dish became very, very popular among the troops and the American officers because it was a mix of the most traditional Italian food–that is spaghetti or pasta–and then the flavors of an Anglo-American breakfast. And that creates a bridge between the two sides of the Atlantic.”
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
So, is it fair to say that carbonara is a form of culinary fusion?
LUCA CESARI:
Yeah.
LILIA PINO-BLOUIN:
“Yes, it is the ultimate culinary hybrid, par excellence.”
LUCA CESARI:
Assolutamente.
DAN PASHMAN:
So carbonara could probably only have come into existence with contributions from Americans who were in Italy during World War II. That’s why Luca calls it an “American dish born in Italy.” In other words, I’m far from the first American to contribute to pasta’s evolution. But even when carbonara was created, there was not widespread agreement on what the ingredients were. Luca says that old cookbooks often list the cheese as parmigiano instead of pecorino and the meat as bacon or pancetta, which is basically Italian bacon instead of guanciale. The very first recipe printed in Italy had pancetta and gruyere–a cheese that’s not even Italian! Other recipes had mushrooms or garlic. And there was that infamous one with the clams. Luca tells me when he shares his research with Italians, some of them object. They insist their grandmother’s grandmother made carbonara the exact same way people make it today. But others are open to a new perspective.
LILIA PINO-BLOUIN:
“The storytelling around cuisine is changing. Some people do start to say, ‘Well, maybe what we’ve told each other up until now is not all that realistic. Maybe the time has come for us to listen to those who do research and those who have documents. And maybe the history of our gastronomy is not as linear as we’ve always thought it was.'”
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
So Luca, I am writing a cookbook. I am trying to show people that there are a lot more ingredients that you can and should put on pasta. On one hand, I have a great respect for Italian food and culture. I love Italian food and culture. I also want to play with it in my own way.
LUCA CESARI:
Yeah.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
So as I work on this cookbook–as I attempt to do that–what advice do you have for me?
LUCA CESARI:
Oh…
DAN PASHMAN:
Over Zoom, Luca shakes his head and wags a finger at me as if to say, “I don’t have advice.” He just has one word of encouragement, and he doesn’t need a translator.
LUCA CESARI:
Go.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
“Go!”
DAN PASHMAN:
After talking with Luca, I’m feeling emboldened to put my own spin on pasta dishes and thinking that maybe Italians should give their cuisine more credit for its continued evolution, which I find exciting. Coming up, we pick up my Italy trip when I journey all the way to the southern tip of the heel of the country’s boot to find three pasta dishes I’ve never seen in an American restaurant. Stick around. Welcome back to The Sporkful. I’m Dan Pashman. I got some exciting news! I am taking The Sporkful on tour. When my cookbook comes out, I’m doing a series of live podcast tapings and book signings. I’ll be in conversation with some incredible folks, hitting New York, Long Island, Chicago, the Twin Cities, Atlanta, Miami, D.C., Philly, Boston, LA, San Francisco, Seattle, and still more to come! For all the details and the full list of my special guests, go to sporkful.com/tour. Okay, back to Italy. Over several days in Rome, I learned a lot of crucial information and ate a lot of pasta. But now it’s time to move on. I board a train to the region of Puglia. As I travel south, Italy’s mountains and hills flatten. The air becomes dusty. There are palm trees and cacti. I spend a lot of time on the ride trying to figure out whether Italy has actual deserts, but it proves challenging because Google refuses to believe I don’t mean to be searching for Italian “desserts.” After more than six hours, I arrive in the city of Lecce, in the southeastern corner of Italy. Even if you’ve never been to Italy, you’ve heard of Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Sicily, Tuscany, the Amalfi Coast… Lecce is not near any of those places. There’s not enough water to sustain livestock, which means there’s no dairy and almost no meat. So the food here is very different from the rest of Italy and from the Italian classics most Americans know, which makes it perfect for my cookbook. I meet Silvestro Silvestori, who runs a cooking school in Lecce called The Awaiting Table.
SILVESTRO SILVESTORI:
Buongiorno.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Oh, wow. This is such a cool room.
DAN PASHMAN:
Silvestro was born in Italy, grew up in America, and then moved back to Italy as an adult. He became a student and teacher of what’s called “cucina povera,” meaning the “cuisine of poverty”–peasant food.
SILVESTRO SILVESTORI:
Poor people historically were forced to eat a lot of greens–forced to eat a lot of legumes. The pig of the Salento is actually probably the chickpea or the lentil. Lots and lots and lots of legumes.
DAN PASHMAN:
So where other Italians might be eating prosciutto and mozzarella, people in the Salento wero traditionally eating legumes, which grow well in dry climates. These legumes form the basis of the two dishes I’ve come across in my research that I’ve journeyed to Silvestro’s cooking school to learn about. One dish is ciceri e tria, which combines deep fried pasta and boiled pasta in a chickpea broth. Silvestro makes it for me, and it’s super simple but also kind of mind blowing.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
That is so good.
DAN PASHMAN:
The combination of the crispy and chewy pasta textures is transcendent. The next dish is fava e cicoria, a puree of fava beans and chicory, which is a bitter green. In Lecce, they serve it just like that–a puree–often with bread for dipping. But my recipe developer, Katie Leaird–aka Super-Nonna–lived and cooked here in Puglia and suggested something pretty revolutionary, which I run by Silvestro.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
So the idea with fava e cicoria–this may be controversial–but we are thinking about adapting it into a pasta dish. What do you think of that?
SILVESTRO SILVESTORI:
Change the name. Or “inspired by” or that sort of thing.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Right.
SILVESTRO SILVESTORI:
Playing with something like this dish and saying, “I’ve improved this for you…” Jamie Oliver has this problem all the time when he comes to Italy. “But I put meatballs in it.” And he’s like a dog who expects that you love the fact that he chewed your slippers, right? There’s no value of it being reinterpreted when it’s already perfect.
DAN PASHMAN:
How we name the recipes is something I’ve actually thought a lot about during this project. I’m doing a recipe for kimchi carbonara, and I think calling it carbonara is fair game. It’s carbonara with one ingredient added. But in the case of fava e cicoria, I do get what Silvestro is saying; it isn’t a pasta dish at all. So while Katie and I will make it into a pasta dish, we’re not going to claim that it is fava e cicoria. We’ll give it its own name and say it’s inspired by fava e cicoria.
SILVESTRO SILVESTORI:
So should I show you how to make this?
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Yeah, let’s do it.
DAN PASHMAN:
Silvestro and I make the traditional version of the dish, which will give me a reference point for the pasta I’ll develop with Katie. He finishes it with what a recipe writer might call a “drizzle” of olive oil, but in reality is multiple glugs of it.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
The olive oil is pooling in the bottom of the bowl here, and it does not feel like too much because it’s not just like a little bit of lubrication. It’s like an ingredient. When I put a bite of this into my mouth, I am tasting a lot of olive oil.
DAN PASHMAN:
The fava beans are rich and creamy, the chicory is crunchy and bitter, and the olive oil is peppery and herbaceous. I can’t wait to taste this over pasta. My journey to one of the farthest corners of Italy has been worth it. While the two dishes I came here to research will still require a lot of recipe testing and development before they’re ready to go into the book, I’ve confirmed that they’re really special. And I can’t wait to share them. From Lecce, I travel an hour north to another city in Puglia: Bari. This is where I’ll have my first taste of a dish called spaghetti all’assassina. “Spaghetti all’assassina” literally means “assassin’s spaghetti.” It’s spaghetti cooked in spicy tomato sauce, pan fried until the pasta turns charred and crispy crunchy. Like ciceri e tria, it’s another dish that incorporates crispy fried pasta. Although this is pan fried. It’s only made in the city of Bari, and I am incredibly excited about its unconventional combination of textures and flavors.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
All right, taking my first taste of spaghetti all’assassina. It smells burnt and tomatoey.
DAN PASHMAN:
Minutes after getting off the train, I’m sitting at a restaurant called Ghiotto Panzerotto. A friend from Bari told me this place has his favorite assassina. Now I have a hot, charred tower of it in front of me.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
This is amazing. It’s honestly so much better than I expected it to be. You got the burnt, crispy bits and the doughy bits.
DAN PASHMAN:
I knew I’d like the pasta–crispy, crunchy on the outside and chewy inside and the spice. I didn’t anticipate the role that tomato sauce would play. It cooks down to a sticky, sweet, spicy paste, which adds great flavor and another contrast in texture. The assassina is fantastic, but I don’t really have anything to compare it to. I need more of a frame of reference. So I continue my assassina crawl at a restaurant called Chez Jo, where I discuss the dish with other diners.
VINCENZO:
I think that the secret is don’t boil the spaghetti…
DAN PASHMAN:
This man, Vincenzo, explains that there’s a big debate in Bari about spaghetti all’assassina. Some people boil the pasta a bit before putting it in the pan with the sauce–just to soften it a little. Others put raw dried pasta straight into the pan with the sauce. Vincenzo makes clear which side he’s on.
VINCENZO:
No boiled spaghetti–
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Don’t boil it.
VINCENZO:
Only put it in the padella. What’s the meaning of “padella?”
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
“Pan.”
VINCENZO:
Yes.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
So the spaghetti in the spaghetti all’assassina–I know normally you want pasta al dente.
VINCENZO:
Yes.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
But for spaghetti, I feel like, at Giotto, the inside of the pasta was not so al dente. It was a little more soft.
VINCENZO:
Yes.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Which is good because the outside is hard.
VINCENZO:
Yes. It’s the same. Yes.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
So here, I think the pasta was al dente. It was cooked perfect for al dente. But for assassina, you don’t want al dente.
VINCENZO:
Yes. You need two different consistencies.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Yes. Consistency with different textures.
VINCENZO:
Yes. Soft and hard.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Yes. Crispy.
VINCENZO:
So when you eat crispy, crunch, crunch–it’s perfect…
DAN PASHMAN:
This guy’s speaking my language. Vincenzo even teaches me my new favorite Italian word–the word for “crunchy”–“croccante.” It even sounds crunchy. As I leave, Vincenzo asked me what hotel I’m staying at. He would later drop off a copy of an Italian mystery novel called Spaghetti all’Assassina, in which a fictional inventor of the dish is murdered. It’s the fifth in a series of books featuring Bari’s most dogged detective, Inspector Lolita Lobosco. It’s in Italian, so I’m probably not going to read it. But I love it. Before I feel ready to recreate this dish for my cookbook, there’s one more place I have to go.
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
Good to see you again, my friend.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Good to see you again.
DAN PASHMAN:
I meet up with Antonello di Bari, who I first met through pasta circles. He runs a pasta factory in Bari. He agreed to show me around. I tell Antonello about my plans to include spaghetti all’assassina in my cookbook.
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
A lot of people, even in Italy, don’t know about it. People must know about it because it’s tasty, it’s crunchy, and you can never stop eating it.
DAN PASHMAN:
Antonello and I arrive at a restaurant called Al Sorso Preferito, the restaurant where spaghetti all’assassina was invented. It’s rare that you can pinpoint the time and place a pasta dish was born. As we heard from the food writer and historian Luca Cesari, most past pasta history is the stuff of lore. But assassina is one of the few that we do have a documented story for. Al Sorso Preferito has white tablecloths, tile floors, shiny wood finishes, and wine bottles on shelves along the walls. We’re going to meet a chef who is one of the inventors of spaghetti all’assassina. But first we sit down with another important figure in the dish’s story: Massimo dell’Erba.
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
I have a lot of titles. Among them, I am president of the Academia of all’Assassina.
DAN PASHMAN:
“President of the Academy of the Assassina.”
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
You said you have many titles, Massimo. What are your other titles besides–?
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
I am a physicist. I am an owner of a consultancy firm on technology. I am an expert of gunshot residues.
DAN PASHMAN:
Gunshot residues. Oh, like forensics?
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
Yes.
DAN PASHMAN:
So you have always had a fascination with assassins and killers?
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
Yes.
DAN PASHMAN:
Masimo’s Academy of the Assassina started as a joke. He and some friends set out to taste the dish at the restaurants around Bari that served it, with a rigorous scoring system that rated each version on crunch, spice, and char. They published their results in a Facebook group, which quickly grew to hundreds of members, each of whom had a different opinion about who in Bari makes the best assassina, how crunchy and spicy it should be, and–perhaps most contentious of all–whether the spaghetti should be raw or partially boiled for its fried in the pan with the sauce. Along with the influence of social media. Massimo’s Academy led to something unexpected.
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
Now, there is not a restaurant in Bari that don’t make the assassina. If you think that only nine years ago, this was a dish made by only three restaurants…
DAN PASHMAN:
And back then, Massimo says that nobody in Bari made the dish at home. Now he’s something of a local celebrity.
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
It’s strange that when somebody that I don’t know meets me… “Ah, you are the president of the academia.” I was all a big number of other things before, but now I am known only for this.
DAN PASHMAN:
With help from Massimo, I’ve arranged to go into the kitchen to watch them make the dish and to meet chef and owner Pietro Lonigro.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
This is the inventor?
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
The inventor.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Es un piacere conoscerti.
DAN PASHMAN:
He’s 80 years old now–short and bald, but full of energy. He’s the only one still at the restaurant who was here when the dish was first invented around 1960. Chef Pietro explains that the chefs were making spaghetti with tomatoes and chili peppers–a classic dish–but they accidentally burned it. They were about to throw it out, and they decided instead to eat it. Massimo translates.
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
“This crunchy was…
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Was good.
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
“Interesting. This burning on the different level of burning finally become the assassina.”
DAN PASHMAN:
So when the chefs there realized they had stumbled onto something, they experimented and refined the technique. Customers started asking for it more spicy–more crunchy. Chef Pietro tells me when he eventually bought the restaurant in 1974, he kept riffing on the dish. He added the technique of rotating the pasta in the pan to char more of it, which also further reduces the sauce into that sticky tomato paste. Eventually, he settled on the spaghetti all’assassina he serves today. One of his cooks begins making it as he explains the process. Massimo looks on, and my friend Antonello takes over translating.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Wow, that garlic’s really frying up.
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
Once the garlic is fritti…
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
When the garlic is fried…
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
They start to add tomato sauce.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Right.
DAN PASHMAN:
Now, contrary to what they do at the restaurants I visited yesterday, Chef Pietro does boil his spaghetti briefly before he fries it in the pan. But Massimo, president of the academy, is in the no boil camp. So, he starts debating the question with Chef Pietro and the other cooks in the kitchen.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
What’s happening?
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
They are just discussing on how to cook it because, as I told you before, there are many different ways to do it.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Right. So as I understand, Massimo is explaining that he does not–
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
Cook it before.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Right. Right. He puts it in the pan uncooked. Here, they cook it a little bit. What do the guys who invented assassina think about Massimo’s technique?
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
They just said that it’s a way to do it, but it’s not the best way to do it. So they are discussing about that. It’s so funny.
DAN PASHMAN:
The discussion grows more heated.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
The older man–
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
The older man is explaining that doing as Massimo usually do–the result is going to be not the same because the risk is that spaghetti can burn too much. But adding during cooking–the result is going to be different at the end. And Massimo just said, “Okay, you are right. But next time I come here, I’m going to cook it for you just to show which is the best.”
DAN PASHMAN:
I guess in Italian pasta culture, even the guy who invented a dish can be accused of doing it wrong. At this point, the pasta has been in the pan with the sauce for 15 or 20 minutes.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Right now, it’s starting to burn on the bottom. Now he’s really using the spatula to scrape the bottom of the pan. The spaghetti is starting to stick to the pan, which is good, right? It’s starting to turn– We’re starting to get some black bits. Is that finito?
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
It’s ready!
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Oh my gosh.
DAN PASHMAN:
The cooking may be finished, but the argument isn’t.
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
He’s just explaining how that you don’t have to push so strongly with the–
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Spatula.
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
Yeah, because otherwise you are going to take off even this part.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
You’ll get too much of the burned part.
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
Yeah, it is bitter, and it’s not good to eat. And they’re still fighting on this.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
They’re fighting over whether or not to cook the pasta in advance, or they’re fighting over whether or not to scrape the bottom of the pan?
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
Just… they’re just fighting for everything.
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
Okay.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Time to eat?
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
Time to eat.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
All right. We’re coming back out to the dining room where our plates of assassina are waiting.
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
The real test.
DAN PASHMAN:
We all take bites and chew thoughtfully for a minute before Antonello delivers his verdict.
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
It’s good. But it’s not my favorite meal.
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
This way to make it may be the original way. Okay. I will not discuss, but if you are friendly with the Italian way to eat pasta, these are overcooked.
DAN PASHMAN:
The pieces that are not burned are overcooked, in your opinion. They’re too soft. Antonello, you agree?
ANTONELLO DI BARI:
Yeah, I one hundred percent agree.
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
Few people have obtained results from academia over seven–very few. This is five.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
You would rate this five out of ten?
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
Yes.
DAN PASHMAN:
I have to say, I feel the same as Massimo and Antonello. As compared with the assassina at Ghiotto, that first place I went to, this one just seems to have a little less of everything–less spice, less crunch, less char, less sticky, sweet tomato paste, and less of the nutty pasta flavor that the pan frying creates–less of everything I love about it. I decide that when I work on my own recipe for my cookbook, I’ll use the assassina from Ghiotto as my north star. That night, I would return to eat it there a second time to sear it into my sense memory. Back at the table with Massimo and Antonello, our conversation turns to the future of spaghetti all’assassina.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
As the assassina becomes more popular and more known around Italy and around the world, it’s natural that also it’s going to change.
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
Maybe.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
Evolution. New people will bring new ideas. How do you feel about that?
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
This is normal in cooking. It’s normal in all the human activities. There is nothing that remains equal over the time.
DAN PASHMAN:
Nothing stays the same.
MASSIMO DELL’ERBA:
No, nothing is the same. But you have to remember which are the origins. They must survive together. You have not to forget the origin because if you forget the origin, you have not a point of reference.
DAN PASHMAN:
I agree, and I’m confident the people of Bari will preserve that point of reference for spaghetti all’assassina. At the same time, the inevitable evolution is already happening. In just the last few years, restaurants in the city have created new versions of the dish–one with broccoli rabe instead of tomato sauce, another topped with a dollop of Stracciatella cheese, the creamy spreadable insides of a ball of burrata. So spaghetti all’assassina is a perfect example of how, even in Italian cuisine, people continue to come up with new ideas just as people in kitchens have always done. I come away from my time in Italy with a very different perspective on pasta culture and my place in it. I started out thinking of my book as an attempt to shake up a cuisine that might’ve been too stuck in its ways. Now I see my book as a contribution to the ongoing and never-ending evolution of pasta. Coming up next week in Episode Three of Anything’s Pastable, I return home full of inspiration…
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
I just think this is a good idea. I think this is going to be really delicious, and I can’t wait to try it…
DAN PASHMAN:
And run smack into the reality of having to turn that inspiration into workable recipes.
DAN PASHMAN (FIELD TAPE):
It feels like I accomplished nothing.
DAN PASHMAN:
Then later, the book enters the design phase, and I agonize over the cover with input from Janie and the kids…
BECKY PASHMAN:
I hate it. I actually hate it. Oh my God. Why would you–?
JANIE PASHMAN:
Are you serious?
DAN PASHMAN:
Special thanks to Katie Parla for showing me around Rome and schooling me on Italian history. Her most recent cookbook is Food of the Italian Islands. The Sporkful is produced by me, along with managing producer…
EMMA MORGENSTERN:
Emma Morgenstern…
DAN PASHMAN:
Senior producer…
ANDRES O’HARA:
Andres O’Hara.
DAN PASHMAN:
Our editors on this series are…
TRACEY SAMUELSON:
Tracey Samuelson…
DAN PASHMAN:
And…
NORA RITCHIE:
Nora Ritchie…
DAN PASHMAN:
With editorial help from…
TOMEKA WEATHERSPOON:
Tomeka Weatherspoon…
DAN PASHMAN:
And…
JULIA RUSSO:
Julia Russo.
DAN PASHMAN:
Our audio engineer is…
JARED O’CONNELL:
Jared O’Connell.
DAN PASHMAN:
Original theme music by…
ANDREA KRISTINSDOTTIR:
Andrea Kristinsdottir.
DAN PASHMAN:
Additional music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios. Our executive producers are Colin Anderson and Nora Ritchie. Until next time, I’m Dan Pashman…
CROSBY:
And I’m Crosby from Columbus, Ohio, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.
Leave a Comment
Share