Cascatelli's fans include Sarah Jessica Parker and Martha Stewart; on this episode, Kristen goes behind the scenes with inventor of the perfect pasta shape, 'The Sporkful' host Dan Pashman.
Does the perfect pasta shape exist? It does now, thanks to The Sporkful's creator and host Dan Pashman. Dan and Kristen talk about Dan's 3-year quest to develop cascatelli: the most forkable, sauceable, and tooth-sinkable pasta shape—and, the accompanying 5-part podcast series, "Mission ImPASTAble."
Referenced in this episode:
Genius-Hunter Extra-Credit:
Special thanks to listeners Janet (@janetmccracken) and Anna (@billyskog) for sharing your very strong pasta feelings.
Got a genius lead you'd like to share? Email it to me at genius@food52.com; I want to hear all about it!
Kristen Miglore (voiceover): Hi, I'm Kristen Miglore, a lifelong genius hunter. For almost a decade, I've been unearthing the recipes that have changed the way we cook. Now on The Genius Recipe Tapes, we go behind the scenes with the geniuses themselves, and we get to hear from you. This week, I'm talking with Dan Pashman, host of the podcast, The Sporkful, and creator of the brand new pasta shape with a 12-week waitlist. Dan gave us the underdog story with a timely happy ending. That shape is called Cascatelli, and if you haven't already, I recommend you binge listen to Dan’s five-part podcast series, Mission ImPASTAble, to ride along on the highs and lows of his three-year quest to design the perfect pasta shape and then figure out how the heck it gets made. But today, on the podcast, I wanted to hear more from Dan about the behind-the-scenes of making the story in all of its joyful, nerdy, riveting glory. How do you invent a revolutionary pasta shape and document that story in real-time when everything is happening around you. And I wanted to know what's happened since the big surprises, the peak moments, and if he has any regrets.
I was lucky enough to get one precious box of Cascatelli so far as to quote-unquote research for this episode while I wait a few more weeks for the caboodle that I ordered from Sfoglini. While we wait for the pasta to arrive, the customer reviews all five stars go big. They say this pasta replaces all kinds of short pasta, and this pasta changed my life. So nice, I bought it thrice. And I have to tell you, they are not wrong. I asked all of you what I should sauce my Cascatelli with, and the overwhelming response was ragu. So that's what I did. In particular, I made the Genius Pork Shoulder Ragu from Jenny Rosenstrach and Andy Ward, of the blog Dinner, A Love Story. And when I tried it, it was everything that we had been hyped to believe in more. Each noodle is a big curl of ruffles and ridges that catch loads of sauce and make an ideal portable fight. And while that ragu was perfect and took me back to my favorite local Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. The following day, my toddler added a few noodles that I saved for her to plain yogurt. And you know what? Also good. This truly is a perfect pasta shape for just about any sauce you throw at it. Stay tuned at the end of the episode for some strong feelings from our listeners about what makes or really breaks a pasta shape for them. For now, let's start with just how big and how unexpected the cascatelli fan club has been.
Kristen Miglore: You and your Cascatelli are having a massive couple of months between Sarah Jessica Parker loving it and being in everything from the New York Times to Access Hollywood.
Dan Pashman: Not a combination I expected to obtain!
Kristen: And more! NPR, People Magazine, and more! All these places are excited about your pasta. So this is a big deal for the food world; it’s a big deal for the world's world. But if anyone listening hasn't heard about it, what is your elevator pitch for Cascatelli and Mission ImPASTAble?
Dan: Oh jeez, I host a podcast called The Sporkful, and I set out to invent a new pasta shape. I told the story of my quest to design a unique pasta shape in a five-part series on the podcast called Mission ImPASTAble. The idea was that the series would culminate with the release of the pasta shape as an actual tangible product that people could buy and eat. And it worked! Against all odds, it worked.
Kristen: It did. And I just have to say thank you so much for doing it in this way and for sharing your whole experience, developing this pasta over three years. Down to the nitty-gritty details of how much things cost and the hurdles you faced. The way you put it together was so meaningful and fun to listen to. While I was finishing a book manuscript, I binged it. I listened to it on walks to clear my head. I was in the middle of a very isolating experience on top of a very isolating year. It made me feel like I was a part of something again. And I'm sure it was similar for so many people. Your series came out around the year anniversary of the pandemic starting. Riding along in the ups and downs of this passion project was an excellent distraction for many people.
Dan: I think we certainly lucked out on the timing. We initially planned the launch for October 2020. That’s when we thought we wanted because October is World Pasta Month. People tend to eat more pasta in the colder months. The timing might make it easier to get media coverage. You get all those PR pitches about World Pasta Month, and we thought that would help us. And then, in probably Spring 2020, it became clear that the pasta shape would not be ready for October. Even before COVID was a factor, the creation process was more complicated and timely than we expected. And the other thing was the election. Some marketing people I talked to were not concerned about the election, that elections don’t affect food media because people always eat. And I just did not think it was going to be a regular election. I thought it would be better not to get attention on anything, let alone something fun and joyous, in the lead-up to this particular election.
But in the end, we didn’t have a choice. The shape wasn't ready, and finally, we got it done in March 2021. And I think that it was the right time. People were excited about something fun and upbeat. But also, by March 2021, most people are used to shopping online, even for basics like pasta. Back in 2020, that concept was less accepted. It was always the plan that Cascatelli would only be available online, at least initially. And so I just think it was the right mood and right moment. We did get lucky, and it has been exciting.
I appreciate what you said, that you responded to it. It's also been exciting since the shape came out that people receive their packages and eat them. I am a podcaster, a media audio professional by trade. I am not a chef. You speak to many chefs, and you can probably cook circles around me, Kristen. I'm not an expert on any of that, and I've never written an actual recipe; no one else has ever cooked something I made. In the last few weeks, I've talked to recipe developers and cookbook authors, and they assured me that one of the most extraordinary things about writing recipes is when other people cook them. And I've never had that experience and didn't expect it to feel such a solid connection. These people cooking things I created make me feel like I'm invited to dinner in all these people's homes. Opening Instagram, looking at stories, and see people all over the country and world feels incredible.
Kristen: It's a connection in so many different ways. It's the connection of going along on your very personal journey making it. And then including ways that you might want to cook it and the pasta features that you would enjoy. Forkability, Sauceability, Toothsinkability. We get to experience those in our mouths, our bowls, on our forks. I had the experience last night. I saved my one box. After all, I knew that I wanted to treat it with care because I only got one. Getting a box of pasta is not the reason why I had you on the podcast. I wanted to have you on the podcast because I love the series, and I wanted to hear more about it. But I was also like; maybe I can get a box of Cascatelli.
Dan: It's so funny! I gave my daughter a box to bring to her teacher for Teacher Appreciation Week, and I told my daughter to tell her teacher that Cascatelli is going for 50 bucks a pop on eBay!
Kristen: Yes, this isn't some casual “I bought it for five bucks at the store” pasta. These are precious noodles.
Dan: I look forward to the day when people can get it as quickly as they want to. But needless to say, it's been more challenging than we expected. There has been more demand than we expected.
Kristen: I wanted to know what to do with my one box, so I asked Instagram, and the overwhelming response was ragu. Some people had other ideas, but that was the majority of responses. And you had talked about it catching thick ragu-like sauces. So I made a ragu, but I also made it on a Wednesday night.
Dan: So you made a Wednesday night ragu!
Kristen: I made a regular ragu on a Wednesday night, so it was a pretty late night! But I just didn't want to mess it up; I wanted to experience it. And it was as I was eating it; it was all of the things you described. I didn't have them in mind as I started eating it, but, wow, this is great. I love how this is chewing. That's the Toothsinkability. I love how I'm reaching into my bowl, and every single time I get one perfect noodle. That's Forkability. Every quality that you described you were going for is blindingly apparent in the eating of it. So I can see why that experience hearing from people worldwide, all the different ways they are making it, connects you personally to all of these people's homes and their dinner tables.
Dan: Thank you for saying that! I can take some credit for how well it turned out, I made some good decisions along the way, and I think I had a good process. But I also got lucky! I made specific changes to the shape along the way out of necessity. I wanted it to have ruffles, and I wanted it to have a tube. And I learned that the two features do not combine; it is impossible. You make pasta by extruding the dough through a die which is the mold. Think of the Play-Doh factories of childhood. You push the dough through the thing that comes out of a particular shape. But the movement required to create the ruffles as the dough goes through the die would crush the tube. So I started trying to find all the different ways to combine ruffles in the tube, and I said maybe it's just a half tube, so it's open on one side. We thought that could work, but even that couldn't work.
The breakthrough is moving the ruffles. Originally, ruffles were on along the noodle edges, like lasagna has ruffles down the edges. Imagine if you have a piece of lasagna, and you cut the ruffles off and then folded them in and stuck them perpendicular to the flat part so that it made it possible to get the half tube component and the ruffle component. All of that to just figure out how to incorporate ruffles because I love ruffles, and I think they're underutilized in pasta shapes. There are a million tubes out there. There are a million shapes with ridges. There are a million curly curvy ones, but there are not enough ruffles. So I had to get the ruffles in there, and that's how we got them in. But moving the ruffles so that they were perpendicular to the flat strip had these other benefits that I didn't know it would have.
For instance, the spot where the ruffle strip meets the main strip is right. There are very few right angles in pasta shapes, which creates resistance to the bite from all directions. It's an I-beam; it makes a little spot where the pasta cooks slightly less. You have a little bit of extra texture, Toothsinkability as I call it. And the other big thing is that you have these two ruffle strips right next to each other, both sticking up from the main strip. That area gathers so much sauce; I call it the sauce trough. Because of the ruffles acting like teeth, the sauce gets trapped in there. It’s a Venus Fly Trap! The sauce can get in, but it can't get out. So I don't feel bashful bragging about how good it is. I’m not at all embarrassed to say that I stumbled into so many of those attributes. I'm as surprised as anyone that it works as well as it does.
Kristen: But not just everyone gets that lucky. You have been studying and obsessing over this for all the years before and during the process. You spent time thinking about how much you loved specific attributes and hated certain characteristics of pasta.
Dan: That is my personality in general. I'm a very detail-oriented, obsessive person and always noticing small things that other people don’t see. That was the root of The Sporkful when I started the podcast 11 years ago. So much of it was about obsessing about the tiniest details of essential foods. And that's something I've always done and always had fun doing. Part of this was to harness that passion differently and find a new use for it!
We often do segments on The Sporkful where we obsess in-depth over the tiny details about food. Those segments often get reactions from people saying, “I never knew I had such strong opinions about that!” And I love getting that reaction. It is gratifying because it means that you've learned something about yourself and the food and that it's changed your relationship with that food. Now you will think about it differently forever. I was hopeful that if we did this extensive exploration of pasta shapes, that would be the reaction. Kristen, you work in the world of food and are very knowledgeable, and I'm a generally obsessive eater. So we both have thought a lot about pasta shapes. But I think most average people, even people who love food and pasta, haven't thought much beyond the five, 10, or 20 pasta shapes you regularly eat. But how much time have you spent thinking about why some are better than others? Which ones do you like? Why you want them? How might they be improved? What other shapes are out there that you haven't sought out because they aren't readily available? If you love to eat pasta the way I do, these questions quickly lead to a noodle obsession. You want to know more and try more and think about how to improve existing pasta shapes.
Kristen: And no matter how much you've thought about loving pasta and which types of pasta you love, very few of us have ever thought about how they get made.
Dan: Before I started this project, we would mostly eat traditional supermarket pasta in our family. If I was in an Italian specialty store, I would pick up a unique Italian pasta, something a little fancy. A regular gift from my mom when she comes to visit is high-end pasta. I was aware of the idea of bronze die pasta, and supermarket pasta is Teflon die pasta. I didn't know that before, but I knew there was a difference. I could tell the supermarket pasta was smooth and yellow, and the more upscale Italian pasta was rough and chalky, and I knew that that was from a bronze die. But I hadn't put that much thought into it.
And then, as I learned more about it, I understood that when it's made with a bronze die, you get a rougher surface, making it more tactile; it increases surface area. So Sauceabiliy here is better. Generally, the bronze die does cause some qualitative improvement. But there's also a correlation because if you're making pasta with Teflon die, it means that you're focused on maximizing cost. You're trying to make as much pasta as quickly as possible to make it as cheaply as possible. Using the bronze die means you're caring more about quality. I wanted a balance between cost and quality. I wanted to make it with a bronze die. Since our pasta came out, one of the other fun reactions has been that many people like me or most of the market pasta never really thought about it. I never thought about spending an extra couple of dollars, and I will never go back there because they knew what a difference it was. I didn't realize how much I was missing. I'll only buy bronze die pasta from now on. For many people, higher-quality pasta is an affordable luxury. You can purchase high-end pasta and still feed a family of four for $10 a jar of sauce and a bag of pasta. And so, to me, it's fun to expose people to an affordable luxury that will make you gained a new appreciation for this food that you thought you knew.
Kristen: What was so gripping about Mission ImPASTAble was you confronting all of these big decisions all along the way. Everything from making the shape, to the manufacturing partner, to the packaging and the name. With a little bit of distance from the launch and the whole experience, are there any decisions you would have made differently in hindsight?
Dan: Anything I would have done? I don't know. I’m pretty happy with the way that it turned out. Sure it would be nice in retrospect to have had it take not all of three years and not be quite so stressful. Maybe a few fewer sleepless nights would have been lovely, but as I said, I started off wanting to tell a story for the podcast. As a storyteller, I want a few things to go wrong because it's not an exciting story if nothing goes wrong. Drama and tension come from things going wrong. So things started going wrong. Excellent, thank God this whole thing is a train wreck. But then, we went from a few of those moments to a half dozen of those moments; I knew we had more than enough for good storytelling! No more sleepless nights, no more moments where I'm at the end of my rope, we've got all that; let’s just finish the shape and release this thing already. And then COVID hit, and my bronze die maker couldn't get any bronze to make my pasta die. And no one in the pasta industry had time for me because dried pasta sales increased 40% in nine weeks. Remember, in the early part of the pandemic; people were hoarding food. They wanted pasta because it was cheap and shelf-stable so you can reduce trips to the store. Everyone I was working with to make Cascatelli had to focus on these more pressing issues. That was a whole new obstacle. Right when I didn't need any more roadblocks, here is the biggest obstacle.
Kristen: Many people have asked you about what it was like to make the shape, but making the story alongside three-plus years. How did that all come together? Were you recording everything as it happened and patching it all together at the end, editing it into a story? Or were you making episodes along the way and making decisions based on the story?
Dan: That was undoubtedly one of the significant challenges. It would've been one thing to try to do an epic five-part podcast series or make a pasta shape, but it was always complicated by trying to do both because it's certain junctures, a course of action is better for one of those goals, but it's terrible for the other. It was undoubtedly a challenge. I did record as we went, but I did not record every minute of the process. My poor producer, Emma Morgenstern, would have gone insane. But I did document a lot. The whole series is probably about three hours long in five episodes. From those three hours, there are perhaps 300 hours of tape.
We assembled Parts One and Two a year and a half before they came out, at least in a first draft format, knowing they would change. But I was eager to put something together and share it with Stitcher, our colleagues in the audio production world. To see what's working and not, so it could guide us as we carried on. We got some helpful feedback about what they liked and didn’t, and we put those changes in Parts One and Two. The feedback helped us be more effective as we made Parts Three, Four, and Five because it gave us a target and a creative direction. Part One featured me going to The Pasta Lab in North Dakota. I learned so much about durum wheat, the flour used for most pasta sold in America. Initially, we covered all of the exciting things I learned, but we edited down to the three things that ended up being most crucial as I progressed. Too many details would not be enthralling, but the three relevant ones paid off. The listeners realize why the trip was valuable because they see those three facts come in handy and pay off at the end.
Kristen: Wow. It sounds like there a lot of storyboarding. Figuring out how to get those pieces to fit together, moving them around over and over,
Dan: it was undoubtedly a lot of trial and error. And we put every one of these episodes through a more rigorous editorial process than we're able to do for a typical weekly episode. I'm lucky to have two great producers to work full time on The Sporkful, Emma and Andres O'Hara. And then we have our editor, Tracey Samuelson, who was tremendous. And folks at Stitcher helped with the engineering, sat in on edits, and gave feedback. So, each episode had three revisions, which is not normal for us; we are a weekly show usually cranking out episodes on a much tighter timeline. I've never done anything like this; I've never done a multi-part story myself in my 20 years as an audio producer. That was part of why I wanted to do it. I was inspired by The Start-Up when I listened to it back in 2015. It was Planet Money’s long-form stories about launching a product hosted by Alex Bloomberg. I knew that someday I want to do my version of that. That is where it all started. So it was a lot of fun actually, intense and arduous work. Maybe I’m looking back with rose-colored glasses on, but it was a creative challenge that I wanted to take on; I wanted to see if we could do it. And what would The Sporkful’s version of one of those big podcasting series sound like? How could we put our stamp on that style? After listening to a lot of other people do it well and learning from them, how can I incorporate those lessons into a Sporkful series?
Kristen: With the Cascatelli, when people do get their hands on it, what are some of the ways you have been enjoying cooking with it lately? Is it any different from how you have designed it?
Dan: No, because I intended the shape to work with various sauces and formats. That makes it all the more fun! There is an overdone perspective that certain sauces are made for specific shapes; I don’t abide by that. It would be impossible to make a shape that goes well with every conceivable preparation, but I wanted to make a pasta shape that would go well with 75% of the sauces out there. That was my goal. And I thought that a genuinely great shape should do that. We have eaten it with meat sauce, ragu, pesto and cheese, and any thick sauces. I love it with Andrea Nguyen’s Mapo Tofu Spaghetti from the New York Times, a fantastic recipe and a regular in our home. The sauce is thick, and it's got the little bits of meat that get stuck in the ruffles. That’s excellent. My wife Janie made a delicious mac and cheese with smoked Gouda and Fontina, and we made it on the stovetop, put it into the baking sheet, added breadcrumbs, and broiled it for a few minutes. I'm not a fan of baked mac and cheese; I think it dries out. But I like the saucepan mac and cheese because it's gooier, paired with the broiling technique to get the crispy breadcrumb topping. That's fantastic.
Kristen: And the ruffles, they probably crisp a little bit.
Dan: The ruffles get crispy, and they pick up the breadcrumbs beautifully. So then you get the ruffles coated with breadcrumbs, and then it's double texture.
Kristen: Wow. Now I wish I had another box, and I think that is going to be a while!
Listener Janet: Hi, I'm Janet, and I really don't like fusilli. It feels weird in your mouth; it just bounces around in there. Really, the only good thing about it is the classic New Yorker cartoon when the rigatoni is talking on the phone and says, “Fusili! You crazy bastard, how are ya?!”
Listener Anna Billingskog: I'm Anna, and I am the Senior Food Stylist at Food52. My least favorite pasta shape is elbow macaroni. It is too small, it doesn't have any ridges for sauce, and it doesn't hold any sauce. It is always overcooked, and I think it doesn't belong in any dish except macaroni and cheese.
Kristen: (voiceover): Thanks for listening, and my thanks to Dan Passman, host of the Sporlful podcast and creator of Cascatelli, available on sfoglini.com. That is S F O G L I N I dot com. It'll be linked in the show notes where you can also stock up on lots of small-batch pasta like hemp radiators and porcini trumpets And then have a lovely surprise at your door in about 12 weeks. Our show was put together by Coral Lee, with support from Emily Hanhan. If you have a tip on a Genius Recipe or a new genius ingredient like Cascatelli, I would always love to hear from you at genius@food52.com. And if you like The Genius Recipe Tapes, take a second to rate, review, subscribe, or tell your mom if you haven’t already. It does help us out. Thank you. Talk to you soon.