Pasta by Hand: A Collection of Italy's Regional Hand-Shaped Pasta

by Jenn Louis, Mario Batali (Foreword), Ed Anderson (Photographer)

“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

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Nonfiction, Reference, Amazon, Italian Literature

206 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 24, 2015

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

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!

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

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!

[Stephanie Leonhardt · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Donna Arcoraci · Rating 5 out of 5]

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!

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Sandra Noel · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Garrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

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. :)

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Valerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you want to know how to make Italian dumplings, this is your book!