In part two of “Anything’s Pastable,” Dan embarks on an epic trip across Italy in search of lesser-known pasta dishes — and to learn about the evolution of pasta more broadly. He starts in Rome, where food writer Katie Parla reveals a shocking truth about pasta. Then an Italian food historian challenges Dan’s thinking about carbonara. Finally, he heads south to meet a chef who was there when a regional specialty called spaghetti all’assassina (“assassin’s spaghetti”) was invented. All of this leads Dan to wonder: What does evolution look like in a food culture that’s so often depicted in sepia tones? And what’s his place in that process?
Preorder Dan’s cookbook today (including signed copies), and see if he’s visiting a city near you on his tour of book signings and live podcast tapings with special guests! Follow Dan on Instagram to see photos and videos from the Anything’s Pastable journey. And if listening to this episode makes you want to go to Italy, now’s your chance! Dan has teamed up with Culinary Backstreets to create a tour that will take you to many of the same places, with many of the same people. Tour Rome with Katie Parla, take a cooking class in Lecce with Silvestro Silvestori, and eat pasta in Bari with Dan!
The Sporkful production team includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Nora Ritchie, and Jared O'Connell, with editing by Tracey Samuelson, Tomeka Weatherspoon, and Julia Russo. Special thanks to Katie Parla. Original theme music by Andrea Kristinsdottir. Transcription by Emily Nguyen.
Interstitial music in this episode by Black Label Music:
- “Electro Italy” by Nicholas Rod
- “Hennepin” by James Buckley and Brian Bradley Johnson
- “Talk To Me Now” by Hayley Briasco and Kenneth J Brahmstedt
- “The Cantina” by Erick Anderson
- “Silhouette” by Erick Anderson
- “Layers” by Erick Anderson
- “Midnight Grind” by Cullen Fitzpatrick
- “Mission: ImPASTAble Theme” by Andrea Kristinsdottir
Photo courtesy of Dan Pashman.
View Transcript
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: Previously on Anything's Pastable ...
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): People who come to a cuisine as outsiders might feel less beholden to tradition.
CLIP (EVAN KLEIMAN): I think you're absolutely 100% wrong.
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): Okay. [LAUGHS]
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): I was just thinking about the fact that I am having so much fun testing all these recipes.
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): Janie, where are your thoughts? How does this whole process ...
CLIP (JANIE PASHMAN): This whole — it seems like so much work. I'm actually like, are you — you really wanna do this cookbook? This sounds like ...
[LAUGHING]
CLIP (JANIE PASHMAN): How many recipes do you wanna have?
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): I'm required by my book contract to have 75 to a 100 recipes.
CLIP (JANIE PASHMAN): Oh my god.
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): This is my second book, and my first book nobody bought. And if no one buys this book, I don't — I'm not gonna get a third shot.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: 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.
Dan Pashman: Now, if you haven't listened to part 1 yet, please go back and start there. Okay, let’s get into it.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: 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.
Dan Pashman: But these dishes are so obscure that it’s hard to find people in America who know how to make them. I decide 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's in Italy, and everybody's like, oh my god, Italy — like, why does it have to be in Italy? It's like, 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 the trip. You know, 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 can anticipate a similar question with this cookbook. What will Italians think of ideas I want to try, like kimchi carbonara, mac n dal, and furikake pesto?
Dan Pashman: The obvious answer is that 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 that 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.
MUSIC
[AIRPLANE LANDING INTERCOM]
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.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Katie Parla: It's ... It's really something.
Dan Pashman: Yeah ...
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 Zimmern, and Action Bronson on their TV shows.
Katie Parla: I'm gonna cut through here, cause it's a little bit faster.
Dan Pashman: All right.
Katie Parla: We're walking through ...
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.
Person 1: [GREETINGS IN ITALIAN]
Dan Pashman: 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.
Katie Parla: [ORDERING FOOD IN ITALIAN]
Dan Pashman: 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. And …
Dan Pashman: 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, like the region where my family is from, they might have 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: But that's like — that's surprising to me.
Katie Parla: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: 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, like, fascist propaganda, like everything you can imagine that they're trying to promote as elements of a new Italian identity — and pasta really figures into that.
Dan Pashman: But it’s just ... 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 we've been making this for a long time, but it's often not totally accurate.
Dan Pashman: There's something that I'm trying to sort of figure out how I should go about with this, for this cookbook is: My pasta shape has faced a lot of skepticism from Italians, which is fine, understandable. That being said, like 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.
[LAUGHING]
MUSIC
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 is 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: A deep fried — I mean, I could eat deep fried gnocchi every day forever.
Katie Parla: Also, I would eat — I would dip these in ranch.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 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.
Leonardo Pia: [EXPLAINING IN ITALIAN]
Dan Pashman: One day, he decided to combine them. As he says, this is how a lot of culinary evolution happens.
Leonardo Pia: [EXPLAINING IN ITALIAN]
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: After the feast, it’s time to call it a night.
Dan Pashman: 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 at a trattoria called Armando al Pantheon — Armando at the Pantheon.
Dan Pashman: Anything else that you feel like we need to ...
Katie Parla: The gricia here is pretty legendary.
Dan Pashman: Gricia.
Katie Parla: Gricia.
Dan Pashman: Gricia, that's carbonara without eggs.
Katie Parla: So while that does describe it, it implies that carbonara was first, but in fact gricia's the OG shepherd's pasta that's made with pepper, pecorino, 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: Those are like slabs of guanciale.
Katie Parla: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: All right, this ... 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.
Dan Pashman: As Katie said, gricia was a shepherd's pasta. It first appeared in the Italian countryside. But in the mid-1900s there was huge migration from the country into cities. That's where, legend has it, gricia gave birth to its two most famous babies.
Katie Parla: And 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.
MUSIC
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.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: 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 talk to Luca with the help of an interpreter named Lilia Pino-Blouin.
Luca Cesari: [SPEAKING IN ITALIAN]
Lilia Pino-Blouin: [TRANSLATES] 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 …
Luca Cesari: [SPEAKING IN ITALIAN]
Dan Pashman: Clams?! It had clams?
Lilia Pino-Blouin: Chopped clams. Chopped clams.
Luca Cesari: Clams. Chopped clams, parmesan, and eggs.
Dan Pashman: And Luca, what would happen if you went into a restaurant or any nonna's house in Italy today and say, "I would like traditional carbonara with chopped clams please?" [LAUGHS]
Luca Cesari: [LAUGHS] [IN ITALIAN]
Lilia Pino-Blouin: They would literally take you straight to a madhouse.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Lilia Pino-Blouin: They would put you in restraints and then carry you out to a madhouse.
[LAUGHING]
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.
Dan Pashman: Luca has spent years poring through newspaper archives, cookbooks and other pop culture artifacts to confirm this.
Luca Cesari: [SPEAKING IN ITALIAN]
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 have 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.
Luca Cesari: [SPEAKING IN ITALIAN] ... Bacon.
Lilia Pino-Blouin: … And people might have 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.
Luca Cesari: [SPEAKING IN ITALIAN]
Dan Pashman: So, is it fair to say that carbonara is a form of culinary fusion?
Luca Cesari: Yeah. [AGREES IN ITALIAN]
Lilia Pino-Blouin: Yes, it is the ultimate culinary hybrid, par excellence.
Luca Cesari: Assolutamente [ITALIAN].
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.
Dan Pashman: But even when carbonara was created, there was not widespread agreement on what the ingredients were. Luca says 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 clams.
Dan Pashman: Luca tells me that 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 …
Luca Cesari: [CONTINUES IN ITALIAN]
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.
Luca Cesari: [CONTINUES IN ITALIAN]
Dan Pashman: 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.
Luca Cesari: Okay.
Dan Pashman: I also want to play with it in my own way.
Luca Cesari: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: So, as I work on this cookbook, as I attempt to do that, what advice do you have for me?
Luca Cesari: Oh ... [LAUGHS]
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!
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: Go.
Luca Cesari: Yeah. [LAUGHS]
MUSIC
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.
Dan Pashman: 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 two pasta dishes that I have never seen in an American restaurant. Stick around.
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+++ BREAK +++
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Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I’m Dan Pashman. And I've 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 a bunch of incredible folks, hitting New York, Long Island, Chicago, the Twin Cities, Atlanta, Miami, D.C., Philly, Boston, L.A., San Francisco, Seattle, and still more to come! For all the details, got to sporkful.com/tour.
Dan Pashman: 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.
[TRAIN ANNOUNCEMENT IN ITALIAN]
Dan Pashman: After more than 6 hours, I arrive in the city of Lecce, in the southeastern corner of Italy.
[TRAIN ANNOUNCEMENT IN ENGLISH]
Dan Pashman: 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. It’s in a very dry region called the Salento, where 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.
Dan Pashman: I meet Silvestro Silvestori, who runs a cooking school in Lecce called The Awaiting Table.
Silvestro Silvestori: Buongiorno
Dan Pashman: Oh wow, this is such a cool room.
Dan Pashman: Silvestro was born in Italy, grew up in America, 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 have traditionally eaten 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.
Dan Pashman: 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. The combination of the crispy and chewy pasta textures is transcendent.
Dan Pashman: 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, a.k.a. Super-Nonna, lived and cooked here in Puglia and suggested something pretty revolutionary, which I run by Silvestro.
Dan Pashman: So the idea with fava e cicoria … This may be controversial but we are thinking about adapting it into a pasta dish. What you think of that?
Silvestro Silvestori: Change the name. Or inspired by or that sort of thing?
Dan Pashman: Right.
Silvestro Silvestori: And playing with something like this as this dish and saying, I've improved this for you ... I mean, Jamie Oliver has this problem all the time when he comes to Italy and he — but I put meatballs in it, and he expects — he's like a dog who expects that you love the fact that he chewed your slippers. Right? There's no value of 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. You know, 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’s saying. It isn’t a pasta dish at all. So while Katie and I will make it into a pasta dish, we’re not gonna 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 I make this?
Dan Pashman: 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: The olive oil is pooling in the bottom of the bowl here here and does not feel like too much, because it's not just like a little bit of lubrication, it's like an ingredient.
Silvestro Silvestori: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: When I put a bite of this into my mouth, I am tasting a lot of olive oil.
Silvestro Silvestori: Yeah.
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.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: 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 have confirmed that they’re really special and I can’t wait to share them.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: 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: All right, taking our first taste of spaghetti all’assassina. And it smells burnt and tomatoey.
Dan Pashman: And 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: 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 the tomato sauce would play. It cooks down to a sticky, sweet, spicy paste, which adds great flavor and another contrasting texture.
Dan Pashman: The assassina at Ghiotto 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: Don’t boil it.
Vincenzo: Only put it in the padella. What’s the meaning of padella?
Dan Pashman: The pan.
Vincenzo: Pan. Yes.
Dan Pashman: So the spaghetti in the spaghetti all'assassina. I know normally you want pasta al dente.
Vincenzo: Yes.
Dan Pashman: 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: Which is good because the outside is hard.
Vincenzo: Yes. It's the same. Yes.
Dan Pashman: So here, I think the pasta was al dente.
Vincenzo: Ah.
Dan Pashman: It was cooked perfect, perfetto for al dente, but for assassina, you don't want al dente.
Vincenzo: Yes. You have — you need two different consistenza.
Dan Pashman: Yes, consistency. Right, different textures.
Vincenzo: Yes, soft and hard.
Dan Pashman: Yes.
Vincenzo: Crispy. So, and when you eat crispy, crunch, crunch, crunch — it's perfect.
Dan Pashman: Yes.
Dan Pashman: This guy’s speaking my language. I don't know how to say dynamic contrast in Italian, but Vincenzo does teach me my new favorite Italian word, the word for crunchy — croccante. It even sounds crunchy.
Dan Pashman: As I leave, Vincenzo asks 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 5th in a series of books featuring Bari’s most dogged detective, Inspector Lolita Lobosco. It’s in Italian, so I’m probably not gonna read it, but I love it.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: I’m getting a sense of what makes spaghetti all’assassina so special, and so delicious. But if I’m going to put a recipe for it in my cookbook, I have to know how to make it.
Dan Pashman: Coming up, my research culminates when I visit the restaurant where the dish was invented, and interview the 80-year-old chef who was there when it happened. Stick around.
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+++ BREAK +++
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Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful. And before we get back into the show, you now, if you’re hearing me eat my way across Italy, you may be thinking, “I’d like to do that." Well, guess what? I’ve got good news for you: I’ve teamed up with the folks at Culinary Backstreets to create a food tour of Italy! The tour will hit all the major spots you’re hearing me visit with a lot of the same people. Sign up for this tour and you’ll eat in Rome with Katie Parla, cook in Lecce with Silvestro Silvestori, and eat spaghetti all’assassina in Bari with me! Yes, I’m gonna be joining for part of the tour too! It’s all happening in November. Get the info at CulinaryBackstreets.com/sporkful. Okay, back to the show.
Dan Pashman: I’m in Bari, where I’ve eaten a couple of versions of spaghetti all’assassina. I did also chat up folks working in those restaurants to gather a bit of intel and I was able to confirm that at both places I visited, they do not boil the spaghetti before frying it in the pan. But I didn’t get much more info on the cooking process than that. 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: 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 this.
[LAUGHING]
Antonello di Bari: Yeah, 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. You know, 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 pasta history is the stuff of lore. But assassina is one of the few that we do have a documented story for.
[GREETINGS IN ITALIAN]
Dan Pashman: 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 lot of titles.
Dan Pashman: Okay. [LAUGHS]
Massimo dell’Erba: Among them, I am president of the Academia of All’assassina.
Dan Pashman: President of the Academy of the Assassina.
Dan Pashman: You said you have many titles, what are they?
Massimo dell’Erba: I am a physicist.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Massimo dell’Erba: I am a 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: Massimo’s Academy of the Assasina 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 before it’s 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 nobody in Bari made the dish at home. Now, many do. And he’s something of a local celebrity.
Massimo dell’Erba: It's strange that when somebody that I don't know meet me, "Ah, you are the president of the academia.", I was known a big number of other things before, but now I am known only for this.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] Right.
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: This is the inventor?
Massimo dell’Erba: The inventor.
Dan Pashman: 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.
Pietro Lonigro: [SPEAKING IN ITALIAN]
Dan Pashman: 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, when they decided instead to eat it. Massimo translates.
Massimo dell’Erba: This crunchy was ...
Dan Pashman: Was good.
Massimo dell’Erba: Was interesting.
Dan Pashman: Right.
Massimo dell’Erba: It was good.
Dan Pashman: Right.
Pietro Lonigro: [SPEAKING IN ITALIAN]
Massimo dell’Erba: This burning on the different level of burning finally become the assassina.
Dan Pashman: So when the chefs there realized they had stumbled on to something, they experimented and refined the technique. Customers started asking for it more spicy, more crunchy. Chef Pietro tells me that 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 …
[COOKING AMBI]
Dan Pashman: Oh, that garlic's really frying up.
Antonello di Bari: Once the garlic is fritti ...
Dan Pashman: When the garlic is fried ..
Antonello di Bari: It's fried ...
Dan Pashman: Okay.
Antonello di Bari: He start to add tomato sauce.
Dan Pashman: 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.
[DISCUSSION IN ITALIAN]
Dan Pashman: What's happening?
Antonello di Bari: They are just discussing on how to cook it because as I told you before, there are other many different ways to do it.
Dan Pashman: Right. So as I understand, Massimo is explaining that he does not, um …
Antonello di Bari: Cook it before.
Dan Pashman: No, he .. Right, right.
Antonello di Bari: Boil the spaghetti before.
Dan Pashman: Yeah ...
Antonello di Bari: Raw.
Dan Pashman: He puts it in the pan uncooked. Here, they cook it bit.
Antonello di Bari: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: What do the guys who invented assassina think about Massimo's technique?
Antonello di Bari: He just said that it's a way to do it, but it's not the best way to do it.
[LAUGHING]
Antonello di Bari: So they have discussion about that.
Dan Pashman: Right, right. [LAUGHS]
Antonello di Bari: It's so funny.
[DISCUSSION IN ITALIAN]
Dan Pashman: The discussion grows more heated.
[HEATED DISCUSSION IN ITALIAN]
Dan Pashman: What? [LAUGHS] The older man, the chef ...
Antonello di Bari: The older man, yeah, yeah, yeah, is explaining that doing, as Massimo usually do, the result is gonna be not the same because the risk is that spaghetti can burn too much. But adding during cooking, the result is gonna be different at the end.
Dan Pashman: Right.
Antonello di Bari: And Massimo just said, okay, you are right. But next time I come here, I'm gonna cook it for you just to show which is the best.
[LAUGHING]
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.
[COOKING AMBI]
Dan Pashman: Right. Now, it's starting to burn on the bottom, so now he's really using the spatula to like scrape the bottom of the pan. The spaghetti is starting to stick. [Massimo dell’Erba: Yeah.] to the pan, which is good, right? It's starting to turn — we're starting to get some black bits. Oh? Is that finito?
Antonello di Bari: It’s ready!
Dan Pashman: Oh my gosh.
Dan Pashman: The cooking may be finished, but the argument isn’t.
[ARGUING IN ITALIAN]
Antonello di Bari: He's just explaining how that you don't have to push so strongly with the ...
Dan Pashman: The spatula.
Antonello di Bari: Yeah, because otherwise you are gonna take off, even this part ...
Dan Pashman: You'll get too much of the burned part.
Antonello di Bari: Yeah, that is bitter and it's not good to eat. But ... and they're still fighting on this.
Dan Pashman: Right.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: 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 of pan?
Antonello di Bari: Just — they're just fighting for everything.
[LAUGHING]
Massimo dell’Erba: Okay.
Dan Pashman: Time to eat?
Massimo dell’Erba: Time to eat.
Dan Pashman: All right, we're coming back out to the dining room where our plates of assassina are waiting.
Massimo dell’Erba: The real test.
Antonello di Bari: Yes.
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 is not my favorite meal. Yeah.
Massimo dell’Erba: This way to make it, maybe the original way, okay — I will not discuss, but if you are friendly with Italian way to eat pasta, these are overcooked.
Dan Pashman: The pieces that are not burned are overcooked in your opinion.
Massimo dell’Erba: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: They're too soft. Antonello, you agree?
Antonello di Bari: Yeah. I a hundred percent agree.
Massimo dell’Erba: Few people have obtained results from academia over seven — very few. This is five.
Dan Pashman: Five? You would rate this out of 10?
Massimo dell’Erba: Yes.
MUSIC
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 pan frying it 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: 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: Evolution, new people will bring ideas. How do you feel about that?
Massimo dell’Erba: This is a normal thing. Cooking, it's normal. You know the human activities. There is nothing that remain 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 forgot the origin, you have not 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.
Dan Pashman: 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.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: 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 have been too stuck in its ways. Now I see my book as a contribution to the ongoing and never-ending evolution of pasta.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: Coming up next week in episode 3 of Anything’s Pastable, I return home full of inspiration ...
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): I just think this is a good idea. [LAUGHS] I think this is gonna 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 …
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): 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 …
CLIP (BECKY PASHMAN): I hate it!
CLIP (EMILY PASHMAN): [LAUGHS]
CLIP (BECKY PASHMAN): I actually hate it. Oh my god, why would you ...
CLIP (JANIE PASHMAN): Are you serious?
Dan Pashman: In the meantime, please note that Anything’s Pastable is available for preorder right now wherever books are sold. We got links to stores as well as an option to preorder a signed copy at sporkful.com/book. Place your order now and you'll it when it comes out on March 19th.
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. And if you want to join Katie for a food tour around Rome, and hang out and cook and eat with me in Italy, and see and experience a lot of what you heard in this episode … you should sign up for the tour I’m working on with Culinary Backstreets! It’s happening in November, get the info at CulinaryBackstreets.com/sporkful.
Dan Pashman: Two more quick things: If you want to see some of my photos and videos from my trip to Italy, follow me on Instagram, @TheSporkful. I even have video of that whole scene at Al Sorso Preferito where everyone arguing in Italian about the spaghetti assassina. You can see it on video at my Instagram. And one more reminder to come to see Sporkful Live: Anything's Pastable — the big tour kicks off in a couple weeks. Get the info at sporkful.com/tour.
