[MISSION IMPASTABLE THEME]

Dan Pashman: Previously on Anything's Pastable...

CLIP (KATIE PARLA): The 20th century is when Italians start eating pasta regularly, and ...

CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): Wait, you're telling me that pasta wasn't a big thing in Italy until the 1900s?

CLIP (KATIE PARLA): That's right.

CLIP (ANTONELLO DI BARI): Spaghetti all’assassina, it's tasty, it's crunchy and you can never stop eating it. A lot of people, even in Italy, don’t know about it. People must know about this.

[LAUGHING] 

CLIP (JANIE PASHMAN): Look, you're putting all this work in, and then like, what if the book, you know, doesn't sell? You are a great storyteller and you're a great writer, but like, you even say you're not a chef. 

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. And this is episode three 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: If you haven't listened to parts 1 and 2 yet, please go back and start there. And hey, before we get into it, I do want to mention that throughout this series I’m sharing photos and videos of the whole process on my Instagram. I even posted a video of the scene in the kitchen at Al Sorso Preferito in Bari, with everyone arguing over how to make spaghetti all’assassina — it’s pretty priceless. So check all that out and follow me on Instagram @TheSporkful. All right, let’s do this.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: When I set out to write my cookbook, my pasta fairy godmother Evan Kleiman warned me. She said Americans writing about Italian food often get caught up in the romance and nostalgia of Italy. They end up rehashing the same old traditional recipes with the same photos of the hills of Tuscany and nonnas in aprons caked in flour.

Dan Pashman: I return from Italy more determined than ever to avoid these tropes, because my biggest takeaway from the trip is that the romance around Italian food is tied up in a lot of mythology. Pasta culture isn’t as old or as static, as I thought. It may not evolve as fast as some cuisines, but like all the others, it's always changing.

Dan Pashman: Now I see my book as part of this never ending evolution of pasta. In the fall of 2022, I head back into my kitchen. To meet my publisher’s deadline, I have to finish all my recipes in six months. The list of recipes that I want to include is almost full and my team of developers has been hard at work on them. 

Dan Pashman: But there are a few that I want to try to do on my own. At the start of this process I wouldn’t have considered attempting that, but now I’ve tested a few dozen recipes from my developers and I feel like I’m getting the hang of this. I want to see if I can do it, if I can take some of these recipes from start to finish myself.

Dan Pashman: The first dish I'm gonna try is not an original creation — it’s my spin on one of the dishes I went to Italy to learn about.

Dan Pashman: All right, so I am 15 minutes into my first attempt to make spaghetti all’assassina from scratch ...

Dan Pashman: As you’ll recall from episode 2, spaghetti all'assassina, or assassin's spaghetti, is the dish from the city of Bari that I fell in love with. The spaghetti is pan fried in a spicy tomato sauce until the sauce is sticky and the pasta is charred and crispy crunchy. Now as we heard, there’s a big debate in Bari about whether to boil the pasta briefly before pan frying it. At Ghiotto, the restaurant that served my favorite version, they don't boil — they put uncooked, dry pasta straight into a frying pan filled with spicy tomato sauce. They say this maximizes char and crunch.

[KITCHEN AMBI]

Dan Pashman: So that’s what I do. I take a pound of plain old DeCecco spaghetti, same brand Ghiotto told me they use, and I add a jar of sauce — cause remember, I favor using good jarred tomato sauce over making it from scratch. But as soon as I start cooking I run into problems.

Dan Pashman: Didn't seem like enough liquid. I added half a jar of water. Then the tomato sauce was still mostly evaporated, but the pasta was hard in the center, so I had another half a jar of sauce and a little more water. I just wanna figure out how much liquid I need and then I can figure out the ratio of sauce to water.

Dan Pashman: All I'm really basing this first attempt on is having seen assassina cooked once in Bari and knowing how I want the end result to taste. I quickly realize I should have gotten a little more info.

Dan Pashman: It's all sticking to the bottom. It's really burning. I might be ruining this pan. This might be this pan's first and last attempt with spaghetti all'assassina.

[COOKING AMBI]

Dan Pashman: The sauce has completely cooked off and burnt. The pan is black and there are pieces of pasta that are broken off and fused to the bottom of the pan. Basically, I ended up turning the pan crispy without turning the pasta crispy.

Dan Pashman: I’m not using a nonstick pan because I don’t remember the chefs in Bari using non-stick for their assassina, but whatever they did to prevent sticking seems to have eluded me. My daughters come into the kitchen to see what’s going on.

[BECKY PASHMAN ENTERS KITCHEN]

Dan Pashman: Becky, how would you describe how this looks?

Becky Pashman: Um, this kind of looks like a cry for help.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Dan Pashman: Despite the smoky haze in the kitchen, and the pan looking like it was pulled out of some kind of wreckage, the pasta itself looks like it might not be terrible.

Dan Pashman: Emily thinks it looks good.  

Becky Pashman: It looks yummy but it doesn’t look like what it’s supposed to look like. It looks like you just tried and failed at life.

Dan Pashman: As I continue cooking the pasta, Janie walks in ...

Janie Pashman: It smells good and looks good. Do you ... Did you destroy the pan?

Dan Pashman: Maybe. I wonder if I transfer this to a non-stick pan with oil if it might crisp. Let me give that a shot.

Janie Pashman: No, don't ruin another pan.

Dan Pashman: Despite Janie's protests I make the transfer.

Dan Pashman: And I hear some sizzle.

[SIZZLE]

Dan Pashman: That's promising.

Dan Pashman: I try not to fuss with it too much, to let it sit and get crispy ...

Dan Pashman: Oh!

Dan Pashman: And that seems to work …

Dan Pashman: We have some charring.

Dan Pashman: I decide this is as close as I’ll get for a first attempt, and begin putting the pasta on plates to serve. 

Dan Pashman: Ohhh! Emily, what do you think?

Emily Pashman: I think that it's really good.

Dan Pashman: What do you notice about it that's different from other pasta dishes you've had?

Emily Pashman: It's, uh, crunchy.

Dan Pashman: Yes! Becky, thoughts?

Becky Pashman: Bruh, it's so good.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Becky Pashman: It looked so bad when it was in the pan and it ended up being good.

Janie Pashman: It's like ... It's like a bibimbap bowl. You know, like it's crunchy on the sides.

Dan Pashman: Mm-hmm.

Emily Pashman: You know what it needs?

Janie Pashman: I think it needs a little more sauce, maybe.

Dan Pashman: Yeah. I think you're right, Janie. 

Janie Pashman: It's a little dry. 

Dan Pashman: It's a little dry and a little too brittle.

Emily Pashman: And a little more chewy.

Dan Pashman: I would want it to be a little more chewy.

Becky Pashman: I think the chewiness is perfect, but I think it needs a little bit more spice. It doesn't taste that spicy.

Janie Pashman: I really liked it. So the only thing you have to do is buy a pan that you're ready to throw out?

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] No, you gotta use a nonstick pan.

Dan Pashman: Janie and I start to clean up.

Dan Pashman: And here you are now picking the dried, crusty pieces of burnt pasta off of the destroyed pan.

Janie Pashman: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: That's a good sign to me. I take that as a compliment.

Janie Pashman: Yeah.

Becky Pashman: I think it was pretty good for, like, a first attempt. I thought it was gonna be, like, horrible. I didn't think you knew what you were doing.

Dan Pashman: And so what did you learn from this experience?

Emily Pashman: That's nice.

Becky Pashman: Uh, maybe I should like …

Dan Pashman: Come on. You can say it.

[LAUGHING]

Becky Pashman: I'm gonna go have more pasta.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING] [WHISPERS] I think she was gonna say that I actually know how to do things. [LAUGHING]

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Yeah, I can do things. But if I’m going to get this assassina recipe right for my cookbook, I’m gonna have to do everything better. I spend some time reading through the few recipes online for spaghetti all’assassina to see how others do it. I think about what aspects of my version need improvement. Over the next couple of months, I work to get it dialed in.

Dan Pashman: Spaghetti all’assassina, take two.

[BEEP]

Dan Pashman: I managed to not nearly destroy a pan, just went non-stick the whole time. So that was an improvement. Emily, thoughts?

Emily Pashman: The last time, I think was maybe a bit more crunchy.

Dan Pashman: In some ways, this actually feels like a setback because it's less — a lot less crunchy.

Janie Pashman: Do you think that the brand of sauce makes a difference or the amount of sauce?

Dan Pashman: I mean, the amount of sauce will make a difference. And I put ...

Janie Pashman: Like less sauce would make it burn better, right?

Dan Pashman: [SIGHS] Yeah. Well, here's the thing. There's two different factors. There's sort of like, there's the burning of the pasta and then there's like the caramelization burning of the sauce. And I think what happened was, I confused the burning of the — like, the char of the tomato sauce cooking down and turning dark. All right ... [LAUGHS] Mama's was falling asleep, too. I managed to put all three of my family members asleep by talking about …

Janie Pashman: Just keep making the food. We don't really need to know the details.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Another issue with all my tests so far is that the raw pasta is not getting fully submerged in sauce. My pan isn’t big enough to lay that much spaghetti flat. So I had to toss the pasta to coat it in sauce so it could soften. But in mixing the raw pasta, I keep breaking a lot of it, leaving it in shards. I decide that on my next trial, I am going to boil the spaghetti for a minute or two first, rather than starting with it raw. If it’s a little soft, it’ll be flexible enough to lay flat in the pan and be submerged in sauce without having to be tossed so much. At the pace in bari, where they had my favorite assassina, they insisted that you shouldn’t boil the pasta first, that it would make the final result mushy. But they must be using a very big restaurant sized pan that allows them to lay all that raw pasta flat. I don’t have that option, and I want my recipe to be practical for home cooks. So I give the pre-boiling technique a shot …

[BEEP]

Dan Pashman: All right. Spaghetti all’assassina take three is underway. The kids aren't around. I boiled it in water for two minutes and then put it in the sauce.

[SIZZLING]

Dan Pashman: [WHISPERS] Sizzling sounds.

[SIZZLING]

Dan Pashman: All right, the sizzle has turned into a crackle. 

Dan Pashman: I finish making the assassina and serve it up to Janie.

Dan Pashman: I think this is my best attempt yet.

Janie Pashman: Yeah, this is really good. And the strands stayed together. 

Dan Pashman: I think I nailed the texture.

Janie Pashman: The thing that's different to me, this — I felt like last time it was a little more sauce.

Dan Pashman: Yeah. I did use more sauce last time. The tomato ... The intense tomato flavor is missing a little bit. I gotta get that back.

Dan Pashman: This is spaghetti all’assassina take four.

[BEEP]

Dan Pashman: This was the first time that I added tomato paste into the sauce. I think that was a big improvement.

Emily Pashman: How come some are, like, really crunchy and dark, and some are really light and they're, like, normal. Like, they're, like, complete opposites?

Dan Pashman: That's part of spaghetti all’assassina. I don't want every strand to be exactly the same. It's better if there's a mixture.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: I’ve managed to get that char and that tomato flavor, but I’m still tinkering with the spice. Even the fancy crushed red pepper that I bought online for this doesn't seem to replicate the more complex spice of the assassina at Ghiotto. So for this last test, I had the idea to switch to chopped pepperoncino, jarred hot peppers from the supermarket, and that’s a big improvement. More important, after another test using partially boiled spaghetti, I think that’s the way to go for my recipe. At home with a normal person sized pan, I think a brief boil makes it more practical. And frankly, I think the results can be just as good as if you put raw pasta in the pan, so maybe that’s one more Italian food myth busted.

Dan Pashman: At this point, I feel like I’m closing in on the assassina of my dreams. I decide to send the recipe to Captain Rebeccah, our recipe editor, to have her test it out and share feedback. She loves it overall, but she does make some tweaks, which means I need to test it one more time. So in December 2022, five months after I first laid teeth on spaghetti all’assassina in Bari …

[SIZZLE]

Dan Pashman: You hear that sizzle?

[BEEP]

Dan Pashman: That's the sound of our last trial for spaghetti all’assassina.

Becky Pashman: Let me try this.

Dan Pashman: What do you girls say? Do you deem this ...  

Emily Pashman: It is good. 

Dan Pashman: Do you deem this recipe finished? Is it good enough to go in the cookbook?

Becky Pashman: Yeah. [CONTINUES EATING]

Dan Pashman: All right. I was kind of going — hoping for like a sort of big triumphant moment here?

Becky Pashman: Okay.

Dan Pashman: You wanna like, um, be excited or something?

Becky Pashman: Hmm. I'm okay. 

Dan Pashman: Maybe Becky was right to deny me my big triumphant moment, because the truth is that I think this last batch needs more tomato paste. I add one more tablespoon to the recipe and send it ahead to Captain Rebeccah for a final test. The next week she confirms it’s good to go. Insert big triumphant moment here! 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: So spaghetti all’assassina is done, but there are still a lot of recipes to finalize, which means a lot more decisions. 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: And one of the biggest of all is what pasta shapes to pair with which sauces. Yes, cascatelli and my other shapes, vesuvio and quattrotini, will get starring roles in the book, but I want to feature a wide range of shapes. 

Dan Pashman: So, what makes a great pairing of pasta sauce and shape? This is a question I contemplate during multiple vision quests, by which I mean long walks with our dog Sasha. So prepare yourself, because this is gonna take a minute. 

Dan Pashman: In order to pair a sauce with a shape, you first need to understand the different types of sauces that are out there. Once you know the type of sauce you’re working with, you can figure out the best shape to pair it with. And I’ve come to the conclusion that you can classify all pasta sauces based on two criteria. You ready? Number one:

[VISCOSITY MONTAGE]

Dan Pashman: This is a fancy word for thickness and stickiness. A higher viscosity sauce is thicker and stickier, like in mac and cheese. Lower viscosity is more thin and oily, like a white clam sauce. And Number two:

[CHUNK FACTOR MONTAGE]

Dan Pashman: This is a combination of how many chunks there are in the sauce and how big they are. So a high chunk factor sauce could be shrimp scampi with whole shrimp, or primavera with cubes of vegetables. Low chunk factor means chunks are very small, like in a ground meat sauce, or nonexistent, like with vodka sauce.

Dan Pashman: I’ve decided that every pasta sauce can be classified by its combination of Viscosity and Chunk Factor. This framework really helps me make decisions about sauce and shape pairings. One example? It leads me to use shells in more recipes than I would have guessed. Because when you have a low viscosity sauce with a high chunk factor, there’s not a lot of stickiness and thickness to bind the chunks to the pasta. Shells cradle those chunks beautifully, especially if you eat the dish with a spoon. 

Dan Pashman: In the book I’ll go into more detail on this concept and use these terms to explain why I’ve paired certain shapes with certain sauces. And I hope that this section of the book will help people match pastas with sauces even beyond the recipes in there, just as general pasta life advice.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: While I was off on my vision quest, my recipe developers were still sending me recipes that I need to test, so I get back at it. There’s a vegan dirty orzo, a play on dirty rice developed by the Soul Food Sauce Boss Darnell Reed.

Janie Pashman: I love this. This is actually one of my favorite things so far.

Dan Pashman: I love it too, but decide I want it to have a little more Creole seasoning. Next is shells with miso butter and scallions, from Saucy Spicetress Asha Loupy.

Becky Pashman: Holy shnikers!

Janie Pashman: What kind of cheese is it?

Dan Pashman: It's parmesan cheese. 

Becky Pashman: Yes, sir. 

Dan Pashman: But it's got miso. 

Dan Pashman: I decide to reduce the amount of butter. But that one’s a hit, a clear winner. Super Nonna Katie, Captain Rebeccah and I also take turns refining the cavatelli with artichokes and preserved lemon that you heard us working on in episode 1.

Dan Pashman: Eight months and thirty-one cans of artichokes after I found the recipe that inspired the dish, I do one final test and it’s perfect. Other recipes need bigger changes. Like the Mexican wedding soup, a play on Italian wedding soup with turkey meatballs and chiles.

Janie Pashman: These meatballs are ... a little bouncy.

Dan Pashman: Bouncy?

Janie Pashman: [LAUGHS] They're not like soft and ...

Dan Pashman: The meatballs are bouncy?

Janie Pashman: Sorry, I know you just put a lot of work into them, but they taste like cafeteria meatballs.

Dan Pashman: Ouch. I love the flavors but I do hear what Janie’s saying. I think trying to get all the spices evenly mixed into the meatballs meant I had to overwork the meat and that made it a little tough. To reduce the need to handle the meat, I suggest to Captain Rebeccah that we combine the spices first, then sprinkle that mixture into the ground meat. She tests out the new instructions, loves how the meatballs come out, and moves that one to the finished recipes folder.

Dan Pashman: Realizing that I was able to solve a culinary problem on my own makes me feel great. And even though that one was a lot of work, when I end up with a result that I love, it feels worth it. But when I don’t get that result, all the old questions and doubts start to creep back in. Like with one recipe I ask my mom to test …

Linda Pashman: It just was like — it just didn't work. It's just too much. And also the color is just not good. It looks like dirt.

Dan Pashman: That recipe doesn’t make it into the book. Then there’s a cooking catastrophe that brings Emily running into the kitchen. I ask her to do an impression of what I sounded like from the other room …

Emily Pashman: Oh, no! Ahh! And I come and there's like sauce on the computer.

Dan Pashman: I literally have pureed cauliflower sauce in all the cracks of my laptop. The number one thing I'm concerned about, scraping up all the sauce and getting it back into the bowl because I can't bear the thought of having to start this recipe from the beginning again.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Coming up, weeks away from my deadline, another recipe failure sends me spiraling, and I get to a point I never thought I’d get to. Stick around.

MUSIC

 

+++ BREAK +++

 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I'm Dan Pashman. Before we get back to the show, I want to let you know that I’m doing a bunch of exciting book events coming up, starting with a free virtual event this Friday March 15th. I’ll be on Talk Shop Live in conversation with my friend Kenji Lopez Alt, who was nice enough to write the foreword to my book. I’ll also be taking questions from you. And you can actually order signed copies of the book through that event page right now. There’s a link at Sporkful.com/tour. Again, the live virtual event is this Friday ​​March 15th at 8 P.M. eastern 5 Pacific. And after that, I’m hitting the road for a series of live Sporkful tapings that will also be book signings. I’m gonna be in conversation with more incredible folks than I can list here and hitting cities all across America. It’s the biggest tour in Sporkful history! So I hope you’ll come out, I’d love to see you there. You can find info on the virtual event and all the live shows at Sporkful.com/tour. Now back to Anything’s Pastable.

Dan Pashman: As the fall of 2022 turns to winter, my deadline is approaching. In the midst of hosting this podcast, doing cascatelli stuff, and helping to shuttle the kids here and there, I’ve  finished about 75 percent of the recipes — but it feels like I’m limping towards the finish line. Decision fatigue is setting in. And that’s not the only kind of fatigue I’m battling …

Dan Pashman: I'm driving back from another trip to the grocery store, made pasta with potatoes and cheese for lunch — play on a classic Neapolitan dish. Now, I'm cooking swordfish with salsa verde, a pasta dish for dinner, which also sounds delicious, but maybe the potatoes and cheese are just still in my belly. But I gotta be honest, I think I'm getting tired of eating pasta. The two pasta recipes in the same day is a lot. It's kind of grueling. [LAUGHS] It's hard. I have to like mentally, like put myself in an altered state where I'm tasting them and like, imagine if you were really in the mood for this, then would you like it?

Dan Pashman: The recipes on my to do list start to run together in my mind. Which one were we adding lemon zest to? Did I need to test that one with all the anchovies again? Now, it’s Christmas 2022 and I have six weeks to finish all my recipes. I test a baked cauliflower mac and beer cheese with a heavy dose of mustard and a pretzel crumb topping, inspired by one of my favorite bar snacks — a soft pretzel with extra mustard. I bring the finished dish when we go to a friend’s holiday party. Janie and I discuss when we get home.

Dan Pashman: Ugh, I’m just feeling very demoralized. I spent like nearly two hours on that pasta dish tonight with that beer cheese, pretzel, cauliflower — it just like didn't — I don't know, I didn't think it was that good.

Janie Pashman: Oh, yeah. I mean, I didn't try it, but everyone else thought it was good.

Dan Pashman: I mean ... [SIGHS] You know, it's mac and cheese, it can't be bad. But like, I just thought the sauce was very runny and it didn't really have the mustard flavor I wanted and the roux kind of was like grainy. I don't know.

Janie Pashman: All right, I think you're just really tired. Maybe let's — we can think about it in the morning, because I don't know, everyone who tried it said it was good.

Dan Pashman: I mean, what are they going to say? I don't know, it's just discouraging. I'm trying to check these things off my list or whatever when I finish recipe and feel like it's good, at least I think I'm making progress. And then to like put so much work into making one and then have it not come out well, it's just like, feels like I accomplished nothing.

Janie Pashman: I don’t know, I’m tired and I’m over the cookbook.

Dan Pashman: [SIGHS]

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: When I was a kid, even before I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life, I knew that I wanted my job to involve being creative. I remember in Mrs. McDonnell’s fifth grade class, I had an idea for some kind of science activity center that we could build, all about light and sound. I came home from school and spent the whole afternoon writing up an outline of the concept. Mind you, this was not for any assignment. I wasn’t required to do it. I just got excited about the idea.

Dan Pashman: This would happen to me periodically throughout middle school and high school — a creative spark led to an obsession. Whatever I would do when I grew up, I knew I wanted to keep chasing that spark. Now, 25 years into my career, I’ve learned that the harder part is turning an exciting idea into a finished thing that’s actually good, especially as your ideas become more ambitious.

Dan Pashman: Along the way, you’re going to get discouraged and it’s going to feel like a slog and you’re going to question whether it’s worth it. And for me, at those moments, I try to tap back into the spark that got me excited about the project in the first place. Now, as I hit a wall on my cookbook, I’m struggling to find that spark. Until one day, when I’m in the car running errands …

Dan Pashman: I got excited cause I got an idea. So Ali Slagle, she has this cookbook, um, called I Dream of Dinner, and I was looking through it. It's a great cookbook. And she has this dish where she cooks pasta — she boils pasta and then she puts it on a sheet pan with some sauce and puts it in the oven, so the whole thing gets, like, crispy edges. And I thought, that's genius. She uses a short pasta shape. I forget which one. And I was thinking about this and I was like, what if we used a long pasta shape? What if we took fettuccini, cooked it, boiled it, all right? Then drizzle it with some olive oil and put it on a sheet pan — probably oil the sheet pan, too. You spread the fettucini all out on the sheet pan, so it’s flat. So it looks almost like a nest, like a flat nest. And cause then it would kind of all ... Like, you would end up with a cohesive bottom layer that would hold together and you would actually, like, slice squares out from the sheet pan. And then I'm like, wait a second. This is basically a pizza. But instead of a crust of pizza, it's crispy cooked pasta. You could just do cheese and and tomato sauce out of a jar on top of this crispy pasta base. And I just think this is a good idea. [LAUGHS] I this is gonna be really delicious and different. I can't wait to try it.

Dan Pashman: A few days later, I give pasta pizza a go. I take cooked fettuccine and put it on an oiled sheet pan. I top half with tomato sauce and cheese, and half with artichokes, feta, and za’atar, which is a combo I use on homemade pizza sometimes. I put it in the oven. Becky and Emily wander into the kitchen while the pizza’s baking …

Emily Pashman: It smells like pizza.

Dan Pashman: This is an experiment. I'm not following a recipe that anyone gave me. This is just an idea that I had while I was driving

Emily Pashman: Pasta pizza?

Dan Pashman: Yes.

Becky Pashman: Which ...

Dan Pashman: Should I explain it more, or is that?

Emily Pashman: Um, I mean, first of all, it's really all that I need to know. And if I ask you to explain it, I know it's gonna go into like a whole hour speech about it.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Emily Pashman: So I'm just gonna avoid that and just say, yeah, no.

[LAUGHING]

Becky Pashman: You're basing this whole thing off an idea that came to you in the car?

Dan Pashman: Yes.

Becky Pashman: So you had no proof that it was gonna work or not, but you still wasted materials on it anyway?

Dan Pashman: It's not a waste if you learn something from it.

Becky Pashman: No, no. It's still a waste.

Dan Pashman: I'm not worried about waste, it’s cooked pasta. In my house, it’ll get eaten. What I’m worried about is that I desperately want to see some proof of concept here, I really need some good news. For my first test, even if it’s not perfect, I want some indication that it’s even possible to cook pasta in a way that it coheres into a single sheet, firm and crispy on the bottom, so you can cut slices, pick them up, and eat them with your hands like pizza. 

Dan Pashman: But after 20 minutes in the oven, the pasta still isn’t crisping on the bottom. The family is getting restless ...

Emily Pashman: Pasta pizza would be like pasta on top of the pizza.

Becky Pashman: No. No, it should be ... It should be pizza pasta, cuz like the pizza is like describing the pasta. You're using pizza as an adjective.

Emily Pashman: Exactly. But if it was pasta pizza, it would sound like pasta on top of pizza.

Janie Pashman: That's what they're saying.

Dan Pashman: It's a pizza made of pasta.

Janie Pashman: Yeah.

Dan Pashman: So the adjective goes first. So pasta is the adjective modifying pizza.

Emily Pashman: No, but pizza's the adjective because you're describing the pasta. Because the pasta is pizza.

Dan Pashman: Pizza pasta might technically be more correct. But to me, what will make this dish special is that it functions like a pizza. It’s topped like a pizza, and eaten with your hands like a pizza. So if I call it pizza pasta, it sounds like a pasta dish. But I want it to sound like a pizza. So I’m overruling my family — Pasta Pizza it is. 

Dan Pashman: But I’m getting ahead of myself. Because it won’t matter what I call it if it turns out to be physically impossible. After another 15 minutes in the oven, I take it out …

Dan Pashman: Oh? We do have some crispiness on the bottom. I'm still not sure that it's gonna really hold together like a slice of pizza. 

Dan Pashman: I serve it to my taste testers.

Becky Pashman: So I have the artichoke and feta one first, and that wasn't really holding together, so I ate it with a fork. But right now I'm eating the tomato sauce and cheese one, and that seems to be holding together a lot better.

Dan Pashman: The fact that some of the pasta pizza is functioning as I want is a ray of hope. I make note of what I need to change next time: more oil to make it crispier, and figuring out how to make it stay together so I can cut and serve it without it falling apart. Over the next couple weeks I test the recipe again and again.

Dan Pashman: This is pasta pizza, take two.

[BEEP]

Dan Pashman: The big change that I made is that I mixed egg in with the pasta and that helps to bind it together to hold it together more. And I put more oil in the pan, which helps it to get crispier on the bottom.

Becky Pashman: It's definitely a big improvement from last time. It's like I'm eating pizza but with pasta. It's really good.

Dan Pashman: All right. Pasta Pizza, take three.

[BEEP]

Janie Pashman: This looks amazing!

Dan Pashman: It really looks like pizza, don't you think?

Janie Pashman: It’s, like, beautiful! Yeah, but it's just so pretty looking. It's like ... Like, it'd be nice to put out for a party.

Becky Pashman: I could eat this three meals a day, 24/7. It's literal gas.

Dan Pashman: Is that a good thing? Is that what the kids say?

Becky Pashman: Yeah, gas makes the car go, which makes friction on the road, which makes heat, which means fire, which is a good thing.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] Got it. All right. We're getting closer.

Becky Pashman: Bro, this is as close as you need to get.

Dan Pashman: No, there's more room for improvement. 

Dan Pashman: I continue to experiment with different quantities of oil, cooking times, and other variables …

Dan Pashman: All right, this is pasta pizza, take five.

[BEEP]

Dan Pashman: I mean, it looks amazing. It's holding together well. It's crusty. It's crunchy. The big change that I made this time is that I put the pasta in the pan in the oven by itself for 15 minutes before I put the toppings on to give it more time to brown and turn crispy. Emily, do you feel like it's gotten better?

Emily Pashman: Yeah. The other ones were more like pasta. This one is like ... like, it tastes just like pizza.

Dan Pashman: Oh my god. Yes! This is a lot better.

Dan Pashman: As I tell Janie and the kids, another change I made here is that I switched from fresh mozzarella to shredded mozzarella. And I love fresh mozzarella, but the problem was it was releasing a lot of liquid and that was making the bottom kind of soggy. The shredded mozzarella holds the whole thing together a lot better.

[EATING PASTA PIZZA]

Emily Pashman: We use shredded mozzarella when, when we make regular pizza.

Dan Pashman: Mm-hmm.

Janie Pashman: What's interesting is, like, you always say like, I'm not a trained chef. You know, you just like to, like, obsess about food.

Emily Pashman: Mm-hmm.

Janie Pashman: Like this is something that the recipe testers would typically do, and like, you're not a — you know, like to think like, oh, if I change the cheese, then it will be less watery or whatever, that's an impressive thought that you had. I think you're crossing over into, you know, culinary territory, chefdom.

Becky Pashman: It's delicious, but to be honest, this is kind of bittersweet cause it's like, now if you don't keep making new versions, I can't keep eating them. I'm never gonna eat them again.

Dan Pashman: I feel really excited about this. And can I tell you something? I know that this cookbook has been a lot of work for me and that's created stress for everybody, and I'm sorry for that.

Emily Pashman: It's not stressful.

Becky Pashman: Yeah.

Emily Pashman: And you know what? Feel free to make a thousand dishes. And we’ll just keep eating and eating them.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]

Becky Pashman: Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're the only one who’s stressed out. The rest of us are enjoying this.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] I'm not sure your mom ...

Janie Pashman: Speak for yourself.

Dan Pashman: But when I'm a little extra stressed out sometimes, you know, that means that you have to deal with a slightly cranky parent. Is it worth it?

Becky Pashman: It depends on the pasta.

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING] But this is like this — this is why you do things like this, like take on a project like a cookbook cause the feeling of having an idea while you're driving in the car and getting excited about it and thinking about it, and then trying it over and over again and making it better and better and refining it, and then finally nailing it, like seeing that idea through to fruition, like that's the fun part of my job.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: And just like that, the spark is back!

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: In the weeks that follow, I finish up the last of the recipes on time. I work with recipe developer Asha Loupy, a.k.a. the Saucy Spicetress, to figure out where that cauliflower mac and beer cheese went wrong. Turns out, I got confused by some of her instructions, so we rewrote those to make them clearer for people, made a few more tweaks, and the finished dish is off the charts! Mac and cheese with a hint of mustard and beer, with a topping of crumbled Ritz crackers and herbs ... I mean, I can’t even.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Writing this book has made me a better cook, and it’s nice of Janie to recognize that. But in some ways, that mac and cheese dish made me glad I’m not a chef. A chef probably would have understood Asha’s instructions. But I’m making this book for home cooks, like me. So if I can make sure the recipes work for me, they should work for you. In other words, I’ve come to see that for my cookbook, being a home cook isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Coming up in the fourth and final part of Anything’s Pastable, we have the recipes finalized, but now we need to bring them together into a book. Which means we need a title …

CLIP (JANIE PASHMAN): You're not gonna win a James Beard cookbook award with the title: Put It On Pasta. 

Dan Pashman: We also need photos, and props to go in those photos, which will require a trip to a junkyard …

CLIP (JILLIAN): Oh man, I already have like two huge carts that are like 400 pounds full of tile, but I can't stop. [LAUGHS] 

Dan Pashman: And we need to design the cover. 

CLIP (BECKY PASHMAN): I hate it. I actually hate it.

CLIP (EMILY PASHMAN): [LAUGHS] 

CLIP (BECKY PASHMAN): Oh my god, why would you ...

CLIP (JANIE PASHMAN): Are you serious? Like, I can’t even tell what that is.

Dan Pashman: We have a million more decisions to make and a million more things that could go wrong.​ How many of them will go wrong? Find out in our finale, which drops next week, on Monday, March 18, the day before the book comes out!

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: And hey, if you listened to me eat my way across Italy in the last episode and thought, “I’d like to do that,” I hope you heard me announce that I’ve teamed up with the folks at Culinary Backstreets to create a food tour of Italy hitting many of the spots you heard me hit, with many 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! Come eat pasta in Italy with me, it’s all happening in November, get the info at CulinaryBackstreets.com/Sporkful.  

Dan Pashman: To see behind the scenes photos and videos, follow me on Instagram, @TheSporkful. And if you want to see the Sporkful live and pick up a copy of the book that I will personally sign just for you, I am hitting the road, traveling all across the country in conversation with some incredible guests. Get info and tickets at Sporkful.com/tour.

Dan Pashman: Special thanks to Bill Nye the Science Guy and Helen Zaltzman, host of The Allusionist podcast — they were the voices you heard saying “viscosity” and “chunk factor.” Did you spot them? Also, special thanks to all my recipe developers. If you want to learn more about them, we’ve been sharing their personal backstories in short segments in the podcast which ran in February, so I hope you’ll check those out if you haven’t already.