PASTA

Food trends come and go, but pasta holds strong year after year. Despite its humble ingredients - made of merely flour and water or flour and eggs - the magic, rituals, and art of pasta making span over five centuries. Two ingredients are turned into hundreds of stuffed, rolled, extruded, dried, stamped, and handcut shapes, each with its own unique provenance and enrobed in a favored sauce.

With illustrated step-by-step recipes for handmaking forty of the most versatile pasta shapes and one hundred recipes for Italian-American, regional Italian (all regions), and Robbins' own best pasta dishes, plus two dozen vegetable sides, this is the hard-workng manual for home cooks who aspire to master the art of pasta cooking. Whether making pasta sheets for lasagna or stamping out pasta "coins" for Corzetti with Goat Cheese and Asparagusor even buying handmade pasta to make Tagliatelle with Porcini, Rosemary, and GarlicRobbins provides all the inspiration, instruction, and encouragement required to make pasta exceptionally well.

Evocatively photographed with nearly 100 full-color mouthwatering photos of pasta dishes and twenty images from Italy, PASTA is a comprehensive and richly illustrated ode to the ingredients, recipes, and craft that have made pasta the most popular fare of a beloved cuisine.

Missy Robbins is the James Beard Award-winning chef/owner of the acclaimed Lilia and Misi in Brooklyn. Prior to opening Lilia, Robbins cooked at Spiaggia in Chicago and then became the executive chef for A Voce in Manhattan, earning a Michelin star at both locations and three stars from The New York Times. She was a contestant on season four of Top Chef Masters, has appeared on Good Morning America, and has been profiled in a range of publications, from Vanity Fair to InStyle. She lives, makes pasta, and cooks in Brooklyn.

Talia Baiocchi is the editor in chief of PUNCH, the author of Sherry and Spritz, and a widely published food and culture writer. She lives in Brooklyn.