Nadia Caterina Munno - The Pasta Queen : A Just Gorgeous Cookbook: 100+ Recipes and Stories

The Pasta Queen

A Just Gorgeous Cookbook

100+ Recipes & Stories

Nadia Caterina Munno

with Katie Parla

Gallery Books

An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2022 by Nadia Caterina Munno

Illustrations by Dorota Sosnwka

Food and portrait photography by Giovanna Di Lisciandro

Lifestyle photography by Stef Galea

, photo courtesy of the author

photos courtesy of Pastificio Di Martino

photo courtesy of Officine Gullo

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books hardcover edition November 2022

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Cover design by Emma A. Van Deun

Front and back cover photographs Stef Galea

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available.

ISBN 978-1-9821-9515-1

ISBN 978-1-9821-9516-8 (ebook)

For my mother, Kathleen, Nonna Caterina, Zia Pina, Zia Stella, Angela, and Nonna Michelina, my inspirations in the kitchen and in life.

To my brother, Agostino. My inseparable best friend.

It was early 2020, just before the world imploded. One night, my daughter Desiree showed me a new dancing app on her phone, which I was convinced was called ticky-tock. After about ten swipes of watching a girl named Charli dance and people making videos to sounds from the Kardashians reality show, I sighed and was done. My water was boiling downstairs and I needed to gather basil leaves from the garden to prepare my familys favorite meal, Pasta with Pesto alla Genovese.

As I was about to walk out of Desirees room, I heard a woman onscreen announce that she was going to show us how to make the perfect lasagna. I turned back around: Okayyouve got my attention. Lets see how the perfect lasagna is made. I had no expectations, just intrigue.

The womans recipe began with a premade beef sauce, which was gray with a thick layer of oily water on top. This strange liquid was drained into a baking tray, and bright-yellow plastic-like pasta sheets were placed on top. As I watched I became increasingly agitated, but couldnt place why. This was none of my business. Why did I care what this woman was making on ticky-tock?

Next, a strange cheese was peeled out of a plastic film. It was a rich luminescent orange, glowing like the sun, and it was placed on top of the pasta sheets. I flinched. I was usually okay with anyone cooking whatever they thought was great. But this user was telling everyone that this was the perfect lasagna.

I left to go finish the pesto. As I was putting the fresh basil and pine nuts into the food processor, my mind was stuck on the image of that lasagna. It was a moment of great personal reflection. I flashed back to my childhood, to the perfectly structured lasagnas wed have, made from meat sauce, farm-fresh mozzarella, and homemade pasta sheets. With every bite, youd feel a little bit more alive, and somehow the room would feel brighter, faces looked happier, and the sun grew warmer.

Its hard to describe how one feels when one finds their purpose in life. Over the next few days, my heart would race and my face would flush with excitement thinking about sharing my lasagna with the world. Goals were becoming clear to me. I wanted to bring my beautiful culture into the homes of others, and what better way to do it than by becoming an emissary of Italy and its simple, great food? It is faster to make a homemade sauce with fresh ingredients than to order takeout and food delivery. In fact, all you really need for a great meal are three pillars: love of self, love of others, and love of food. This can be accomplished by anyone. Yesanyone.

And that is how The Pasta Queen began.

Pasta is my love language, and Ive been speaking it for as long as I can remember. My love affair with pasta began shortly after I was born in Rome, where I learned to twirl spaghetti before I could even talk, and near Naples where, as a toddler, my nonna taught me the magic of making homemade pasta, gently guiding my tiny hands with the most tender affection and love. As soon as I could reach the stove, I learned to simmer broth for pastina for my brother, Agostino, wrapping his small hand around a spoon and teaching him how to eat every last drop.

I have always been fascinated by the world of pasta, and I cannot remember a time when I wasnt cooking it. I learned from the best, my Nonna Caterina, who had learned to cook from her grandmother, who had learned from her grandmother, and so on. I inherited this generational knowledge from spending countless hours in the kitchen with the women in my family, absorbing their secrets like pasta water absorbs Pecorino Romano in a perfect bowl of cacio e pepe. Like them, I have always been driven to cook for the people I care for, as I believe that cooking with fresh ingredients is the purest expression of love. And now I want to share my lovemy rich culinary history and my familys recipes, before this known only to the Munno familywith you.

I may have been born in Rome, but my family originally comes from the south of Italy, the land of gorgeous gladiators and pasta gods. The Munnos were dried pasta makers stretching back to the 1800s. I spent the first five years of my life, and then almost every summer after, in a village near Naples called Santa Maria Capua Vetere in the region of Campania, home to the stone amphitheater where Spartacus trained and began his legendary rebellion against the Romans. This ancient town is equally famous among Italians as a place where the locals harvested grain and made dried pasta in small family businesses to support themselves.