Evan Funke - American Sfoglino: A Master Class in Handmade Pasta (Pasta Cookbook, Italian Cooking Books, Pasta and Noodle Cooking)

For Grace

Text copyright 2019 by Evan Funke.

Photographs copyright 2019 by Eric Wolfinger.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 9781452173382 (epub, mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Funke, Evan, author. | Parla, Katie, author. | Wolfinger, Eric, photographer.
Title: American sfoglino : a master class in handmade pasta / by Evan Funke with Katie Parla ; photographs by Eric Wolfinger.
Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, [2019] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018059142 | ISBN 9781452173313 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Cooking (Pasta) | Cooking, Italian.
Classification: LCC TX809.M17 F86 2019 | DDC 641.82/2dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018059142

Design by Vanessa Dina.

Typesetting by Jared Gentz.

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I once told my sister that Evan Funke managed to do something old friends and even the Pacific Ocean havent been able to do. He managed to get me west of the 405 Freeway, the insurmountable L.A. traffic barrier, to his restaurant Felix, that temple of pasta and other wonderful foods served about a half mile from the funkiness of the Venice Beach Boardwalk. In American Sfoglino, Evan goes one step further as he brings Veniceand Bolognaright to your own kitchen.

Evan is a true American sfoglino. But he wasnt born into it. Being a sfoglino didnt come from his roots, it wasnt passed down to him through generations of his family. In fact, if you didnt know who he was, youd likely think he was more suited as a Hells Angel than a pasta master. Look at the forearms on the guy. Theyve got more ink than the Monday edition of the Los Angeles Times.

Evans identity as a sfoglino has come through apprenticeship and dedication. He searched out a master. Actually, in his quest, he was fortunate enough to learn from two masters. One is The Maestra Alessandra Spisni, a legend in Bologna and eight-time world champion pasta maker. The other is Kosaku Kawamura, a Japanese master who taught Evan the freedom to go beyond traditional methodology.

In American Sfoglino, Evan honors this rigorous training from two of the most influential pasta makers in the world and passes it on to you. Hopefully, youll pass it along, too.

As a chef and author who has spent the past 40 years obsessing over the details of my craft, I can recognize singular dedication and value. This book might just be the finest, most educational tool available about the art of fresh pasta making. The first section contains essential master doughs and all the fundamentals, a culmination of Evans years of training and experience in those pages. Read and reread this section, as I will, then practice its lessons and practice some more. I know youll be tempted to jump in and start making your own pasta, but please read the details before attempting to recreate those beautiful dishes.

Thanks to Evans maniacal enthusiasm, you may never again be tempted to buy dried, packaged pasta at the supermarket. And before you know it, the word sfoglino will roll off your tongue as expertly as you roll sfoglia itself.

NANCY SILVERTON

SFOGLIA

(sfol-EE-a):

A sheet of hand-rolled fresh pasta dough.

SFOGLINO or SFOGLINA

(sfol-YEE-no or sfol-YEE-na):

A maker of fresh pasta sheets.

Being a sfoglino, or pasta maker, in Bologna is a position of honor, deeply rooted in the citys cultural history, traditions, and lore. For hundreds of years, bolognese pasta makers have practiced their daily ritual of rolling pasta by hand in laboratori (workshops) and homes all over the city. Sfoglini are the very foundation of bolognese cuisine.

My acquaintance with sfoglini and their craft began more than a decade ago, at the tail end of 2007. I was stuck in a dead-end job at a shitty hotel in Beverly Hills. I felt completely lost. While battling bouts of hopelessness, a singular thought struck me one day and it would, ultimately, change my entire life: I wanted to make pasta by hand. To achieve this goal, I wanted the best teacher in Italy (therefore, the world). In those days, the internet was not what it is todaythink: dial up and web pages. After scouring the web for months, I stumbled across a page with a link to La Vecchia Scuola Bolognese run by a woman named Alessandra Spisni. Through a series of emails and phone calls in broken Italian, I eventually secured a position as a student.

Via Malvasia 49, the original location of La Scuola, was 5 kilometers [about 3 miles] from my little apartment on Via Stalingrado. Each day, I hoofed it from that apartment in Bolognas red-light district to the school and back, and everywhere in between. Back then La Vecchia Scuola Bolognese was a tiny ground-level laboratorio with a shoebox kitchen and a 12-table private dining room. Alessandra was not yet the powerhouse celebrity chef she is today, but she was surely impressive. She was a teacher, a mother, a cook, and Emilia-Romagnas preeminent sfoglina. Over the next three months, she would lovingly bestow upon me the fundamentals of making sfogliasheets of pasta rolled with a rolling pin called a mattarello. Included in these lessons was a veritable master class in the richness of the bolognese kitchen.

During my pivotal stay in Bologna I also encountered another masterful character, Kosaku Kawamura, who opened my mind to a different perspective, one that allowed me to see past some of the dogma surrounding Italian culinary traditions. The fundamentals that lie herein are a confluence of these two perspectives and define this book.

Much like the traditions passed on here, pasta making is cumulative. This book is a distillation of my time in Bologna, followed by 10 years of trial and error, curiosity, and repetition. The skills and stories in these pages represent hundreds of years of practical knowledge and the people and philosophies that have shaped my understanding of bolognese traditions. It is my responsibility as a perpetual student and custodian of these traditions and techniques to pass on to you what I have learned.