Ciao! I just got back from an amazing 12-day trip to Tuscany. Of course, my top priority was: eat as much pasta as possible. I think I did a pretty good job, especially since I'm eating for two (that's right, a baby gnocchi Leaird is on her way- due in October!). The regional pastas of Tuscany are just awesome- pappardelle, pici, gnudi, oh my!- and I would need at least another year to really get my fill. Mostly, I made these pasta shapes by hand up at the villa I was staying in (on top of a mountain in Chianti land) for my 10 fellow travelers. But on a day-trip into Florence one day, I stumbled upon this gem: pecorino and pear ravioli. Delightful!

 I wish I could take credit for these, but I cannot. I surprised Daniela, my amazing friend who owns Le Macare in the little town of Alezio (Italy) by showing up unannounced on her restaurant's front porch. Her jaw dropped, she squeezed me tight, and hustled into the kitchen. We shouted back and forth from the porch into the kitchen, catching up on everything that has happened to us in the last 2 years . Clangs of pots and pans punctuated the already lively conversation. Less than 10 minutes later she shuffled back out to the porch with this plate of pasta gold: mortadella-stuffed handmade cappellacci tossed in black truffle butter. Italians really know how to whip something up for an unexpected guest.

I went back to Puglia a couple weeks ago to make olive oil with my dear friend Jolanda (who has an amazing boutique olive oil business called Tenuta Bianca- check it out! Best olive oil I've ever tasted). Sadly, this was a tough year for those ancient olive trees on the southern Italian peninsula; a disease wiped out the whole harvest. When I showed up at my friend's house ready to pick (olives) and press (oil), she greeted me with a tearful hug- overjoyed to see me, devastated to report the bad news. All of a sudden, I had a plan-less week on my hands. Not for long, though. After rapid-fire catching up, Jolanda and I trotted across the street, arm-in-arm like two school girls. We knocked on her grandma's door (a mere 1/2 block away from her own house) and Nonna Jolanda greeted us, hands still knitting as she spoke. The 90 year old woman stood just under 5 feet tall and spoke in fast dialect. We set up an old wood board on her kitchen table and started making pasta together by hand. Who knows how much wisdom she imparted on me in those hours (certainly not me, since I only understood 1 out of every 5 words), but we made orecchiette all afternoon and before I left, she got up on her tip toes and kissed my neck (the only thing she could reach). While holding me in her tiny arms, she told me to stay in Italy forever. Oh that I could...

 I work all week as a full-time test cook for America's Test Kitchen in a hot, bustling, 2500 square foot kitchen alongside 30 other cooks. When I come home for a weekend of rest and relaxation... I make pasta. To put a summery twist on it, I do it outside. These little noodles were happily kneaded, cut, and shaped into cavatelli on my porch looking out over a green meadow abutting a blue sky. Perhaps a little precious, but I think I can taste the difference. 

What a wild- and pastafilled- year it has been! Since my last post, I have moved across the country and started a new job with America's Test Kitchen. Here, I am making and testing recipes for Cook's Country magazine and TV show. It is a dream come true every day in the test kitchen. I also got a dog and named her... Bucatini! Now that I've finally settled into my new Boston life, there will be many new pasta posts coming soon. Promise.

Lila invited me to go crabbing with her in Crab Creek. Though I had never been before, I eagerly threw on my bikini, polar fleece jacket, and floppy sun hat and trekked out to Lila's Flat Point Farm on Martha's Vineyard.

She was waiting for me with a long-handled net in one hand and a bucket in the other. We jumped into her rickety motor boat and sped towards the sandy bluff that separates the Atlantic ocean from crashing into this serene pond. I followed her lead as she stripped off her pants and plopped into the waist-high water, clutching her sweatshirt tight on this chilly October afternoon. We hunted through the reed-lined creek, slowly but not quietly, peering through the water for our prey. When I found my first crab a wave of fear raced up from my toes and through my body until a gutteral scream exploded out of my mouth. I knew it was relatively harmless but I was terrified as I saw the sea spider racing towards me. With Lila's coaching, I plunged my net down and scooped up the crab, screaming bloody murder the whole time. Lila waded towards me congratulating me on the first catch of the day as she tried to catch her breath from belly-laughing.

After three hours of crabbing, yelping, and laughing we headed back to the boat with three male "keeper" crabs in our bucket. Lila stopped abruptly in her tracks. She reached down to pick up some seaweed and examine it in the setting sun. She suggested we harvest some and take it home to cook. I asked her how she knew it was safe to eat. Her eyes widened as she responded: "Katie, when something is this beautiful, it is obviously meant to be eaten." Loving her earnest logic, I scooped up as much of the gorgeous emerald algea as I could and added it to our bounty bucket.

The next day Lila came over to my pasta lab. We washed our seaweed and set it to dry on paper towels. Lila went to work arranging green clumps on the sheets of pasta dough I had rolled out as canvases for the seaweed artist. I rolled the adorned sheets through the pasta machine again to marry the seaweed and dough. Lila cut the seaweed dough into different shapes for ravioli. She mixed and matched different designs for each side of the pasta pouch. We made a filling out of the crab meat and her sister's homemade goat cheese and stuffed it into the designer dough, carefully sealing the ravioli edges so as not to lose a drop of this precious wild food.

I have returned from Bella Italia! The research trip was incredible and I can't wait to share my stories, recipes, and photos from a month full of pasta and sauce-making with you. Today I find myself on beautiful Martha's Vineyard Island off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Making pomodoro passata (preserved tomatoes) was a major focus of my most recent trip. So I wanted to try out what I learned in Southern Italy back here at home. I bought 15 pounds of tomatoes from a local farm on the island and canned them here at my family's home following the lessons I learned from my Pugliese cooking mentors.

Basic Procedure for Pomodoro Passata:

1. Buy the best tomatoes you can find - a lot of them

2. Wait until they are at their ripest stage (before turning rotten)

3. Wash tomatoes carefully

4. Put the clean tomatoes in a big bucket full of cold water

5. Slice each tomato in half

6. Hold one tomato half in each hand and submerge under water

7. Squeeze out the seeds (while your hands are underwater so the juice doesn't spray all over you)

8. Remove squished tomato halves from water, shake dry, and put in pot - repeat

9. Cook the pot of squished tomatoes over low heat until they are just softened and the skins are starting to break

10. Use a food mill to separate the skins and seeds from the pulp*

11. Place tomato puree in sterilized glass jars and seal with fresh lids

12. Process in a boiling water bath (make sure water covers the sealed jars by at least 2 inches) for 30 minutes

13. Save in your cupboard to use all year!

*Note, I used an immersion blender to make my puree today - blending the skins together with the pulp - and skipped the food mill step {# 10 above}. The result was gorgeous!

These noodles remind me of the bouncy coils that hang from curled ribbon bows. I made this pasta shape by rolling out long, skinny ropes of dough and then carefully wrapping each one around a bamboo skewer. After gently sliding the wrapped dough off the tool, it keeps its spiral shape. Since they are hand-wrapped around the skewer, instead of being rolled between the table and the skewer, the noodles have a thicker, rounder profile than their more stretched out, flattened cousins - fusilli calabrese. There's something cheerful and light-hearted about these curly fusilli - I might even try dangling a couple of these dried noodles around my next gift-wrapped package!

Ever pursuing my mission to make pasta by hand, I tried out a new tool I picked up in Turin while shopping at Eataly (a gourmet Italian food market sponsored by Slow Food). Truth be told, this spaghetti cutter rolling pin, though new to me, is anything but "cutting edge" technology. It is simply a wooden rolling pin with evenly spaced grooves that gently leave their imprints as you roll it over a sheet of pasta dough. The indentations aren't particularly deep and the cuts made aren't complete, so you need to pull each tendril of spaghetti apart with your fingers. But, using your hands is really the point of making handmade pasta!

Strascinati originate from Puglia and Basilicata - southern regions of Italy. In Puglia, they are slightly smaller and rounder, while in Basilicata, they tend to be larger in circumference. Strascinati are always made using the same action - that of dragging pieces of pasta across a large wooden surface stretching them out along the way. In fact, that is how this pasta got its name ("strascinato" means "dragged").