Everyone, it seems, loves pasta, and it is very trendy to learn to make it at home. It’s popular all over the world, and especially at a London restaurant called Padella. The dishes served there are absolutely mouthwatering, and have been compiled into an excellent cookbook, Padella: Iconic Pasta at Home, by Tim Siadatan, who is the head chef at the restaurant. This book is actually good enough that the forward has been written by famous chef, Jamie Oliver.

This is not your Italian Grandma’s cookbook. While the recipes are Italian, they are not every day dishes such as spaghetti and meatballs and lasagna. The cookbook does have recipes for lasagna, but not the lasagna that is traditionally served in the US. Most of the recipes call for hand-rolled pasta, and the shapes are different than most of us have used before: pici, tagliarini, peppardelle, gnudi, caramelle, stracci, and agnolotti. There is a primer on making filled pasta with step-by-step photographs to make it easy for any of us. The dishes are also unique in addition to different pasta shapes. There are several recipes for ragùs and other sauces (like Spaghetti All’Assassina – assassin’s spaghetti), containing ingredients like cuttlefish, sardines, duck, rabbit, lamb shanks, and others, which are much different than the norm.

Anyone who wants to expand their repertoire of Italian dishes will want to pick up this excellent and innovative cookbook; it is filled with beautiful, professional, and mouthwatering photographs that will tempt even the most picky eater.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.