Anything's Pastable: 81 Inventive Pasta Recipes for Saucy People

The innovative James Beard Award–winning podcaster who changed the way you think about pasta shapes with his invention of the viral sensation cascatelli now does the same for pasta sauces in this fun and charmingly obsessive cookbook, which includes a foreword from bestselling author J. Kenji López-Alt.

When Sporkful podcast host Dan Pashman launched cascatelli, a new pasta shape he invented that he designed to hold tons of sauce, stay on the fork, and be incredibly satisfying to bite into, it went viral and was named one of TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of the Year. VICE called him "a modern pasta legend."

But as Dan was flooded with pictures of what people were making with his pasta, he was disappointed to see how limited the dishes were: tomato sauce, meat sauce, mac and cheese, over and over. A few party animals made pesto.

So Dan set out to revolutionize people’s conceptions of pasta sauces, just as he did with pasta shapes. He traveled across Italy and worked with an all-star team of recipe developers in the US to create a new kind of pasta sauce cookbook for people bored with the old standbys. That’s why there’s no 3-hour marinara recipe or fresh pasta made from scratch in this book. No photos of nonnas caked in flour or the hills of Tuscany. Instead it’s time to show the world—Anything’s Pastable.

Here you’ll enjoy dishes inspired by a range of ingredients and cuisines:

• Kimchi Carbonara
• Cacio e Pepe e Chili Crisp
• Keema Bolognese
• Mapo Tofu Cascatelli
• Shakshuka and Shells
• Smoked Cheddar and Chicken Manicotti “Enchiladas”
• Linguine with Miso Clam Sauce
• Shrimp and Andouille Mac and Cheese

Lesser-known Italian pasta dishes with a twist:

• Spaghetti all’Assassina (spicy pasta pan fried until charred and crispy crunchy)
• Ciceri e Tria (chewy fresh pasta with crispy fried pasta in a light chickpea broth)
• Cavatelli with Roasted Artichokes and Preserved Lemon
• Creste di Gallo with Fava Beans and Dandelion Greens
• Pasta Frittata

Fun and delicious concoctions that may—or may not—be how they do it in Italy:

• Spinach Artichoke Dip Lasagna Pinwheels
• Pasta Pizza (the “crust” is fettucine fused together)
• Roman Cafeteria Hot Dog Pasta Salad with Canned Veggies

With an incredible array of recipes, Dan showcases the limitless pastabilities when you really know how to use your noodle.

Dan Pashman is the creator and host of the two-time James Beard and Webby Award–winning podcast The Sporkful, which he says is not for foodies, it’s for eaters. He’s also the creator and host of Cooking Channel’s You’re Eating It Wrong. In 2021 Dan launched the new pasta shape cascatelli, a viral sensation that TIME Magazine named one of the Best Inventions of the Year. The story of Dan’s three-year quest to create cascatelli was told in The Sporkful podcast’s “Mission: ImPASTAble” series, which the New York Times named one of the 10 Best Podcasts of 2021. Cascatelli is now in more than 3000 stores across America. In early 2023 Dan received international media attention when he launched two more pastas—obscure Italian shapes called vesuvio and quattrotini—that he produces with the artisanal pasta company Sfoglini, who also make the original version of cascatelli.