An A-Z of Pasta: Stories, Shapes, Sauces, Recipes

Lives up to what I expect from Rachel Roddy - excellent stories and great easy to follow recipes.

Quite simply yet another wonderful book written by Rachel , to add to my collection of all the books she has written to date .Ordering several Hardbacks for Christmas presents this year.

The cover, the colors, the page thickness, and the way the recipes are told are a delight.

Love this book!

Stories, recipes, photos

Last night I made the ravioli with butter and sage. Wow! It was out of this world.

ricette ricercate e fatte bene. anche divertente!unico problema: la mancanza di tempo per fare tutte le belle creazioni!

Although it's a nice book and there are definitely some recipes I'm interested in trying, I was surprised how many recipes don't actually differ that much from one another.There are a few that are almost exactly the same except for one ingredient that has been removed or added, yet somehow these will count as separate entries (obviously I understand regional variations are a thing, and that in Italian cooking in particular many recipes can vary from region to region in only very minor ways, but it I feel it would have been easier and take up less space in the book if the author had just included one recipe in these cases, and included a section in the instructions that explains to add or remove the relevant ingredient to make the different regional variation of the same recipe.This combined with the large photographs (usually very useful) and the obligatory now it seems 'family memories' preamble that you get before a lot of recipes in cook books these days, and there actually didn't seem to be as many recipes as I was expecting. I guess I was expecting multiple types of pasta for each letter, with different ways to cook each one. Perhaps that was expecting too much, but I would have liked more varieties of pasta for each letter with more than one recipe for each, when in fact the number of pasta types and shapes mentioned were in most cases not that unusual. I'll definitely be trying a few, but I'd recommend this book for people looking to start with the basics of pasta cooking, and if the book is on sale as it's obviously going to be more expensive in hardback form.

Compré el libro como regalo para mi novio porque le gusta mucho probar nuevas recetas en casa y ¡le encantó! El libro en sí es muy bonito, bien acabado y con unas fotos maravillosas, pero el contenido también es muy bueno, desde recetas rápidas y sencillas para el día a día hasta recetas para días especiales. El contenido está muy bien organizado alfabéticamente, separado por tipos de carpetas y con índice. Para aquellos a los que les gusta aventurarse también en la cocina, es una gran compra.

I love this book it has a wide range of great pasta recipes and advice on how to make your own too with various shapes covered. It tells you which pastas go well with which sauce but gives you alternatives incase you can't find the 1 mentioned. The little stories that accompany each shape are delightful and I've read it from cover to cover. I haven't had it long so have only made 1 recipe Ziti with onions and beef but it was divine so I've actually made it twice. I can't wait to try some more recipes from this book and an added bonus is it comes with a ribbon page marker which is so rare these days. Just a great quality book and if you like pasta buy it because you will use it again and again I know I will.

This book does it all, recipe after real and cookable recipe in Roddys beautiful, humane, and crystal clear prose. This a history of and an expert guide to pasta but also a master lesson to other would-be food writers on how to structure and present recipes and a book. Rachel Roddy appears to do this naturally, I suspect vast work goes in to concealing her art but that's what makes her a wonderful writer. If you can read you can cook with Roddy because she's the gentlest and clearest of enthusiasts. Her recipes work.The book also has something that far more expensive books never seem to have, a ribbon marker. It's beautifully bound and a steal at this priceThe internet seems to have made most cookery books redundant, not this one. Few cookery books will reward purchase so thoroughly, not so much a book as a family treasure. I intend giving at least three copies as presents and one will be to an exacting italophile foodie.Time is short, shelf space limited, this is the only book on pasta you will ever need. Buy it.