How can we say it, other than they did it again. This is the most comprehensive book on pasta that I have seen yet to date. The folks at Cooking Illustrated are known for their tedious testing of recipes, ingredients, and everything else imaginable. This book follows their long line of other fantastic cookbooks put out by the people at Cooking Illustrated. The book goes into great dept about making of pasta, ingredients to use, how to best prepare the pasta, and then has more recipes than one could ever imagine exsisted on using of the pastas. This book is rich in detail and scope of the subject of pasta. If you are a pasta lover, you will treasure this book.

The first positive impression is the excellent organization of the chapters into different types of pastas, noodles, and sauces for same. While there are many excellent books about on pasta dishes, most especially `The Top100 Best Pasta Sauces' by Diane Seed and just about any book by Marcella Hazan, Lidia Bastianich, or Ruth Rodgers and Rose Gray of London's River Café, this `Cooks Illustrated' volume organizes our thinking about the sauces to make us all much better at improvising our own pasta sauces. It divides pasta sauces into:
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Olive Oil based sauces, both cooked and uncooked.
Pesto and other pureed sauces.
Butter and Cheese sauces, such as spaghetti alla Carbonara
Cream Sauces, such as Fettuccine Alfredo
Sauces with Bread Crumbs
Cooked Sauces with Fresh Tomatoes
Canned Tomato Sauces, such as Pasta Puttanesca and Vodka Cream sauce
Sauces with Vegetables, such as `cabbage and noodles' and `pasta Primavera'
Sauces with Beans and Lentils
Sauces with Meat, such as the classic Bolognese sauce
Sauces with Seafood, such as clam and other shellfish sauces.

Fast, easy to use. Easy to keep clean. Sturdy and well built. Great addition to your gadget collection and the price for the two most useful (roller and fettuccine cutter) was terrific.

Mike will show you how to make Fresh Pasta, step by step, with the Pasta Machine he received as a wedding gift. Life is too short, eat fresh pasta!