New pasta shapes don’t come along very often, in part because dried pasta is not easy to produce. Dan Pashman, host of the long-running food podcast The Sporkful, found this out the hard way. Convinced that “spaghetti sucks,” as he shouts at the beginning of his five-part Mission: imPASTAble series, he set out to create a new pasta that will meet three criteria, which he calls “Saucibility, forkability, and tooth sinkability.”
In other words, a pasta shape that serves as a vehicle for sauce, is easily speared on a fork, and has a nice texture when you bite into it. After three years, Pashman introduces his new pasta shape today. Called Cascatelli, or “Waterfall” in Italian, the pasta is manufactured by New York-based Sfoglini in the Hudson Valley, and is available for shipping nationwide. Below, Pashman discusses the long road that led to today’s launch and his feelings about it, but it’s worth looking a bit more at the episodes that track his journey.
Toothsinkability sketch by Dan Pashman
The Sporkful’s imPASTAble series first examines why bucatini comes close but fails to achieve the saucibility/forkability/sinkability goals, because the hole in the middle isn’t wide enough for any sauce to enter. From there, Pashman eats dozens of shapes of pasta, travels to North Dakota to visit the Pasta Lab, consults with pasta historians and designers, sketches his ideal shapes, and finds out that he’ll have to lay out at least $20,000 just to try to manufacture a dried pasta. His wife, in a cameo on the podcast, does not sound amused.
Here, in an edited email interview, Pashman talks about how he’s feeling now that the big day for his new pasta shape is here, how he hopes Italians will react, and how he came up with the name for cascatelli (and what it beat out).
Cascatelli, the new pasta from The Sporkful podcast
Now that your quest is over, how do you feel about cascatelli?
When the quest first concluded, I felt very unsure. I thought it was really good, but I also had been working on this for three years, and I ate SO MUCH PASTA in that time. It all started to blend together in my mind into a monotextural pasta slurry. I started to worry that I had lost all perspective, that I didn't know what was good anymore. But as you hear towards the end of the series, I started getting really positive feedback from people in the food world that I admire, so that reassured me. And I ate the shape over and over again, and each time I still loved it. So finally I said, "Ok, I think this is real. It's actually good!"
What do you think the reaction will be in Italy? And talk about why you didn't partner with an Italian company on the shape, please.
We did consult Garofalo in Italy but, like with many companies in America, they were too big. They wanted a minimum run of 24,000 pounds and since I was fronting a chunk of the money to get this off the ground, that was more than I could afford. I hope that people in Italy will like it. I'm sure some traditionalists will object, and that's okay. I think there's enough room in the pasta world for some new ideas alongside the classics. From the beginning, I did not want to create a gimmick. I did not want some Instagram-ready sensation designed only to get clicks. I wanted a legitimately great pasta shape that would stand the test of time, something with integrity, that felt in some way like it had been there all along. And I hope people in Italy will recognize that.
What are the best preparations for cascatelli?
My personal favorite is with Andrea Nguyen's mapo tofu spaghetti recipe from the New York Times, except with cascatelli instead of spaghetti. It's also great with a classic bolognese, anything thick where the pasta has a chance to pick up lots of sauce, which it does so well. My mom has been testing it with more recipes. She says it's excellent with shrimp, or in a primavera— dishes where you have big chunks to stab, so you get those chunks and a couple of pieces of pasta and the cascatelli is so thick it just makes for a great bite.
Dan Pashman, host of The Sporkful. Ph Scott Gordon Bleicher
Now that you've tackled pasta, are there any other Italian dishes that you think need improvement?
I think messing with pasta is going to get me in enough trouble! I truly love Italian food and the Italian approach to food, which is so full of sharing and community, and a total lack of pretense that really appeals to me. Before the pandemic, my parents traveled to Sicily and they brought me back so many wonderful delights! I would list them all but I think it might get us in trouble with U.S. Customs.
Any details about the name other than the translation that you can share?
I do feel the need to acknowledge that I know the correct plural is cascatelle, but I took some poetic license because cascatelli sounds more like a pasta name, especially to Americans. We were very close to calling it millepiedi for its resemblance to a millipede, which I thought was whimsical and quirky. But then a large number of people told me that was a terrible idea! I'm glad we went with cascatelli.