GRAB THE MATTARELLO: Let Battle Commence?

For me, reading cookbooks during the pandemic reinforced an old habit  — cracking open a new or vintage cookbook and reading it like a novel. During the early days of the pandemic, I was seduced by the cover of Evan Funke’s “American Sfoglino, A Master Class in Handmade Pasta. ” The deep spinach-green pasta on the cover, the artful photos and the mystique of this burly “Hell’s Angels” kinda guy making perfectly tiny tortellini with his beefy, inked arms and banana size fingers made me want to buy all the doppio zero (00) flour I could find and make pasta. for information on the upcoming AMHS program on Evan Funke’s documentary.)

Evan Funke at work. Credit: Courtesy of Kitchen Detail

shopping while there.

Then, a friend suggested “Pasta Grannies, The Secrets of Italy’s Best Home Cooks” by Vicky Bennison. I fell in love with the nonne or “grannies” who I understood intuitively. These octogenarians from all over Italy transported me to the kitchens of my childhood where Sundays meant making pasta with my mother, grandmother, and aunts. I felt my muscle memory kick in, and I was transported to my mother’s safe, noisy kitchen perfumed with tomato sauce. It would be easy to compare both books and divide into camps: “American Sfoglino” vs. “Pasta Grannies.” But that is not the point. Both are great pasta making resources, offering a lot of techniques and sauce recipes that can be used with fresh or, in a pinch, dry pasta

Both books offer great pasta making techniques and sauce recipes

Evan Funke’s “American Sfoglino” is a master class in pasta making. An American-born, professional chef who was at a personal and professional crossroads, Funke found himself in Italy with the desire to make pasta by hand. His journey led him to Bologna, where the pasta maker or sfoglino is the foundation of Bolognese cuisine. He learned the craft from sfoligna Maestra Alessandra Spisni at La Vecchia Scuola Bolognese, where he also met and learned the Japanese systematic approach to pasta making from Kosaki Kawamura, the “Japanese Sfoglino. ” The fundamentals section offers a step by step how-to on egg, water, and spinach pasta and gnocchi. The rest of the book teaches you how to make 15 different pasta types  — rolled, cut, filled, layered  — with recipes and tips for each. The beautiful, studio-quality color photos make the process look easy. This book is a love letter to Bologna, complete with a resource section on eating, drinking and

A Pasta Granny in action.

Vicky Bennison’s “Pasta Grannies” invites you into the kitchens of le nonne across several of Italy’s regions from Piedmont to Basilicata. English-born Bennison first tasted spaghetti and tomato sauce in Venice at age five while travelling with her parents. For her, food was not merely nutritional or fuel; it was family, community and everyday adventure. At her home in Italy’s Le Marche region, she noted how the over80-year-olds made pasta for their family using techniques passed on from mother to daughter and how changing times made it essential to record and celebrate these older women. Five years of interviewing, filming and recording the grannies produced this cookbook-documentary that transports you to the Abruzzo mountains, the Sardinian seaside and the hardscrabble land of Basilicata, among others.

The introduction focuses on making egg and durum wheat pasta, offers tools and how-to photos. The biographical sketches set the stage and introduce you to the nonne, their families and their homes. The eight chapters, from nuts and herbs to ravioli and tortelli, show the diversity of pasta and its foundation to Italian home cooking. What makes this cookbook a standout are the images. Here you find the nonne in everyday dress, sitting along a balcony, making pasta with a granddaughter, tables set with homespun colorful tablecloths, and photo after photo of gnarly fingers and skilled hands that make dishes of pasta for family and friends. Growing up with Italian women who look, act, and cook like the ones in “Pasta Grannies,” I feel more at home and less intimidated to try the recipes.

“American Sfoglino” looks and feels more upmarket, as though the professional chef at Felix Trattoria in Los Angeles is looking over my shoulder, and I dare not make a mistake. The marketing for both books reflects the times, and during the pandemic there are welcome additions: print, YouTube, Instagram and a website. Tune in to their respective YouTube videos and the difference in style becomes apparent immediately. “Pasta Grannies” transports you into everyday kitchens, where the nonne speak Italian while walking you through the recipe. Evan Funke takes you to his chef kitchen where his love of pasta and traditional methods softens one’s reaction to his salty, four-letter narratives. These two books offer the home cook a primer on pasta-making, but more importantly they continue the story arc of food as cultural, emotional and communal, memorialize the tradition of hand-made pasta making, and introduce us to a wealth of culinary knowledge and techniques that needs to be passed from generation to generation. ❚