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Pasta by Hand: a Collection of Italy's Regional Hand-Shaped Pasta
Inside Book Jacket:
No special equipment or ingredients are needed to form delicious, beautiful pasta shapes with your own two hands, from simple, good ingredients. Pasta by Hand contains more than 65 recipes for homemade pasta dough and instructions on how to shape it into small orbs, cups, twists, shells, noodles, and dumplings, then sauce it for a satisfying, flavorful dish any pasta aficionado will love.
No special equipment or ingredients are needed to form delicious, beautiful pasta shapes with your own two hands, from simple, good ingredients. Pasta by Hand contains more than 65 recipes for homemade pasta dough and instructions on how to shape it into small orbs, cups, twists, shells, noodles, and dumplings, then sauce it for a satisfying, flavorful dish any pasta aficionado will love.
200 pages, Hardcover
First published March 24, 2015
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250 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 15, 2017
What an amazing collection of recipes, each presented with a bit of history and culture. Hand shaped pastas that you may never have heard of, I certainly found quite a few new ones for my repertoire.
I love the way it's divided up into regions, and explores the different unusual (and some more well known) hand formed pastas, comparing and contrasting them. Too, I like that the author gives notes about both traditional sauces to accompany each, as well as alternates. The selection of sauces, recipes given at the end of the book, is somewhat limited and repetitive, and it might have been interesting if she'd given more generic thoughts about what sort of sauces one might consider - at the same time, anyone delving into a book this intricate is likely to be able to look at the suggestions and come up with their own alternatives with minimal effort.
Now to start in on actually trying them!
I love the way it's divided up into regions, and explores the different unusual (and some more well known) hand formed pastas, comparing and contrasting them. Too, I like that the author gives notes about both traditional sauces to accompany each, as well as alternates. The selection of sauces, recipes given at the end of the book, is somewhat limited and repetitive, and it might have been interesting if she'd given more generic thoughts about what sort of sauces one might consider - at the same time, anyone delving into a book this intricate is likely to be able to look at the suggestions and come up with their own alternatives with minimal effort.
Now to start in on actually trying them!
October 27, 2020
A very thorough book with some interesting recipes and pretty photos. The intros to the recipes were fun to read and you could see the chef took her business seriously!
My main issues with the book was a)the recipes all seemed very large and would need to be paired down and b) the recipes repeated themselves a lot, sometimes with only very minor changes— ie, a beet gnocchi recipe might show up in a different location of Italy with the only change being basically either the sauce or the fact that ricotta was added to lighten it up. C) also, while organizing by region added some interest initially, I think it confused the general ability to sort through the recipes without relying heavily on an index of some kind.
Other than that, fun cookbook to look through!
My main issues with the book was a)the recipes all seemed very large and would need to be paired down and b) the recipes repeated themselves a lot, sometimes with only very minor changes— ie, a beet gnocchi recipe might show up in a different location of Italy with the only change being basically either the sauce or the fact that ricotta was added to lighten it up. C) also, while organizing by region added some interest initially, I think it confused the general ability to sort through the recipes without relying heavily on an index of some kind.
Other than that, fun cookbook to look through!
February 16, 2019
I don’t even like pasta but this book thrilled me. Gorgeous photography and many unusual pasta shapes. My favorite was strozzapretti which means “priest strangler”!
You don’t need a pasta machine to make these recipes either.
You don’t need a pasta machine to make these recipes either.
January 4, 2018
One of our 2017 goals was learning to make our own pasta. This was one of the two best books we used in the process!
December 11, 2018
Great way to dive into homemade pasta without having to invest in any equipment! Thank you for taking the time to collect these recipes & share them with us.
August 6, 2015
This book is more about dumplings than "pasta" per se, but is still a great book--especially for beginners. The dumpling recipes are divided by area (I was very disappointed to see Sicily completely left out!), and then followed by sauce recipes. There is a nice variety of pastas and sauces; enough to keep you busy for some time to come! Try the Gnocchi alla Romana, Potato Trofie with Pesto or Spatzli with Sage and Speck. Mix it up or go traditional--there's something for everyone.
Invite some friends over, make some pasta together and enjoy the food and fellowship. Mangia!
I received a copy of this book from Chronicle Books for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Invite some friends over, make some pasta together and enjoy the food and fellowship. Mangia!
I received a copy of this book from Chronicle Books for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
September 12, 2015
If you love pasta, Italy, food, and/or history, you'll love this book. It's all about regional style dumplings, or gnocchi.
I enjoyed reading through it, but with such a strong Italian community in St. Louis, there's no reason for me to make these labor-intensive recipes at home, when I can just drive up to The Hill and buy it fresh. :)
I enjoyed reading through it, but with such a strong Italian community in St. Louis, there's no reason for me to make these labor-intensive recipes at home, when I can just drive up to The Hill and buy it fresh. :)
January 6, 2016
This book is good for inspiration and for learning about different types of Italian dumplings, but I'm not sure about the recipe writing. The saffron gnocchi with ricotta/saffron sauce came out WAY too saffrony and the potato/flour ratio was off. Too much saffron - surprisingly, not a good thing.
May 1, 2017
If you want to know how to make Italian dumplings, this is your book!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews