The Bucatini Dialogues: A Debate About Pasta Shapes (Reheat)

“Literally all pasta shapes are wonderful except bucatini. Bucatini can go get effed.” Francis Lam’s strongly-worded tweet inspired Dan to organize a live event in 2018, where he, Francis (host of The Splendid Table), and Evan Kleiman (host of Good Food) could debate the merits of various pasta shapes.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

  My whole extended family and I went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina this past spring. And I gotta say, I came away feeling like, number one, this is a great family destination. Number two, this is a great place to come all year round. The mini golf alone is probably worth, it's like the mini golf capital of the country. They have the most incredible elaborate mini golf courses. They also have more than 80 championship, full-size golf courses, plus 60 miles of beautiful coastline, all-season sunshine. Of course, you can relax by the beach or the pool. There's also jet skiing, fishing charters, paddle boarding, and of course, food. Oh, man, did we eat well in Myrtle Beach. From fresh local seafood to craft burgers and craft beers to kebabs on the boardwalk. With more than 2,000 restaurants to choose from, from legendary no-frill seafood shacks

• 0:43Dan Pashman?

  to chef-driven dining, Myrtle Beach has it all. Plus, live entertainment at the beach, there's always something epic going on. So, summer may be winding down, but in Myrtle Beach, you're gonna find the coastal vacation of your dreams all year long. Start planning your ultimate beach vacation at visitmyrtlebeach.com. I grew up on Lando Lakes cheese. I still remember going to the supermarket deli counter with my mom and her ordering Lando Lakes American cheese. And now, Lando Lakes cheese and butter are a huge part of my home. There are so many easy weeknight recipes using Lando Lakes cheese and butter that bring delicious restaurant taste right to your table. From chicken parm to weeknight shrimp pad Thai, Lando Lakes has plenty of quick dishes that'll have the whole dinner table talking.

• 1:23Dan Pashman?

  Visit landolakes.com/reцепes/collection for easy weeknight dinners.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Sirius XM Podcasts.

• 1:41Dan Pashman?

  Hey, everyone, Dan here, and I am celebrating because it is National Pasta Month. Happy National Pasta Month to all who celebrate, which I'm pretty sure includes you. Now, of course, here on The Sporkful, this is an especially exciting month, so to celebrate, we're reheating an episode in which we dare to debate the merits of various pasta shapes. Now, this episode was taped live on stage. You heard a little bit of it in our Mission Impossible series, but it was actually much longer after the pasta came out when we released that live show in its entirety. And that's what you're gonna hear today. I was joined onstage by Evan Kleiman and Frances Lamb, both trained chefs and longtime food podcast hosts, as well as friends of each other and me. We covered a plethora of pasta questions, from the best approach to eating a bowl of

• 2:24Dan Pashman?

  ramen, to whether there's a time and place for overcooked pasta. As always, if there's an episode of The Sporkful you wanna hear reheated, we wanna know about it. We take requests. Drop me a line at [email protected]. Tell me your first name, location, what episode you wanna hear, and why. Thanks so much, and enjoy the bucatini dialogues.

• 2:44Dan Pashman?

  This episode contains explicit language.

• 2:49Dan Pashman?

  This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people, and we're coming to you live from Caveat in New York City.

• 3:09Dan Pashman?

  Way back in June 2018, I organized a live event in New York called The Bucatini Dialogues, a debate about pasta shapes. Now, this might sound familiar to you. This was where I kicked off Mission Impossible, my quest to invent a new pasta shape, actually get it made, and actually sell it. We even played a little bit of the tape from this live event in the first episode of Mission Impossible, but most of it has never seen the light of day. Until now. Joining me onstage that night were Frances Lamb and Evan Kleiman, who, unlike me, are both trained chefs. Frances hosts the Splendid Table podcast and radio show, and is the editor-in-chief at Clarkson Potter, the cookbook publisher. Evan hosts Good Food on KCRW in Los Angeles, and she owned one of LA's top Italian restaurants

• 3:54Dan Pashman?

  for more than 25 years. Of course, she was also my pasta spiritual advisor during Mission Impossible. Now, the idea for the live event was inspired by something Frances tweeted about how he hates bucatini. You'll hear more about that, but that tweet got me thinking. Let's explore lots of existing pasta shapes and debate their merits. I can lay out the three criteria that I would use to judge my pasta shape. You all know it by now. Fork ability, how well the shape stays in your fork. Sauce ability, how well it holds sauce. And of course, where would we be without tooth sinkability? How satisfying it is to sink your teeth into it. We could cover everything from spaghetti, which is an extra-thick spaghetti, to wagon wheels. Discuss how they're used, what they go with, and which one should go straight to the garbage.

• 4:37Dan Pashman?

  And the truth is, we didn't talk much about other shapes in our original pasta series, so I am very excited to share this with you now. Okay, let's travel back to June 2018 to Caveat, a basement club on New York's Lower East Side.

• 4:56Dan Pashman?

  I want to allow our listeners to get to know you guys a little bit more and to understand your particular connections to pasta. Evan, tell me about a particular formative pasta dish in your life.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  I would say it was when I was in my early twenties, maybe barely 20, and I was lucky. I was on my, like, third trip to Italy, and I was hanging out with some friends in San Remo, and I was on the beach. And I got hungry, and I was with a friend of mine who's Italian, and he said, oh, let's go get something to eat. And so, I'm looking for the, you know, the frozen banana stand, being from Los Angeles. And, and he said, no, let's go have a nice plate of spaghetti alla vongole. And I'm like, they have that here at the beach? And so, we go up to a thatched-roof restaurant, where everybody's sitting in the restaurant

• 5:49Speaker 02

  in their bathing suits, and I was served this bowl of linguine alla vongole, which is linguine with clams, with garlic, wine, parsley, lemon juice, and I would, that was just it for me.

• 6:03Dan Pashman?

  And what do you mean? Like, why was that so significant?

• 6:05Speaker 02

  It blew my mind. Well, the whole experience was this coming together of, of high food craft that was obviously geared to a culture, attached to a culture, embedded in the sensuality of summer in Italy at the beach. So, it was like a seamless hole, a beautiful little bubble that crashed over my, you know, Los Angeles, raised in the 60s. Not anything like that at all.

• 6:36Dan Pashman?

  How is your life different today because of that bowl of pasta?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  I went home and I had to figure out how to make it. When I started traveling to Europe and tasting things, and then coming home and wanting to reproduce them, it sort of put me in a different place, a different level of obsession, and also an understanding of where my heart really lay, even though I went on to get a BA in Italian literature and film and an MBA.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then I ended up having a restaurant, right?

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Short dalliance with the rest of the world.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:12Dan Pashman?

  Did you put that MBA to good use?

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Well, my restaurant's closed.

• 7:20Dan Pashman?

  Frances, tell us about a formative pasta dish in your life.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  You know what's crazy is my answer is also linguine alla vongole.

• 7:27Speaker 02

  I love this so much.

• 7:28Dan Pashman?

  Wow.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  You know, I grew up the child of Chinese immigrants in suburban New Jersey. And one cheer for suburban New Jersey.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  Exactly one oop.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  I grew up, you know, one of two Asian kids in my elementary school. I always felt weird. I always felt different. I didn't really belong. And then, my parents worked in Chinatown here in New York City, which is the neighborhood right over from Little Italy. And I would come out to their work, like, we didn't have...

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Childcare?

• 8:05Speaker 03

  Yes. Or things to do as a child, so like, when it was summertime, like, what are you gonna do today? Mommy, can I come to work with you? And literally sit in your workplace for 10 straight hours and not do any goddamn thing? Yeah, that sounds great, I'm gonna do that.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  But the highlight was that we would go out to lunch, and sometimes we would go to Little Italy. And when we went to Little Italy, we would, if like, we were feeling high on the hog, we would go to a place called Il Cottile, which means the courtyard. And there was this beautiful courtyard. You know, for a Little Italy restaurant, it was like, really quite beautiful. And there was an indoor courtyard and a skylight, and it felt like you were in some alfresco place. I didn't know those words. I'd never been to Italy, I'd never seen pictures of Italy, but it felt like I was somewhere else. And the food came out, and my parents would, you know, order for me, and we got linguine alla vongole every single time. Because it was noodles and seafood, which is food we understood as Chinese people, but white people ate it.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  So when I would eat linguine a la vongole, or as my mom called it, linguine with white clam sauce, I felt like, maybe I can belong.

• 9:29Dan Pashman?

  And how did those experiences, eating in that restaurant, how is your life different today because of those experiences?

• 9:36Speaker 03

  I became a white person. It's great. You can see the stuff I can do now.

• 9:43Dan Pashman?

  Yeah.

• 9:48Dan Pashman?

  Now, at this special event, we weren't only there to share happy memories of the pasta of our youth. The whole point of the evening was to debate pasta shapes, to argue. Like I said, the idea for this event came from something Francis had tweeted about how much he hates bucatini. Bucatini, case you need a reminder, is like a thick spaghetti, but hollow down the center. So it's almost like a narrow drinking straw. And why does Francis hate it?

• 10:12Speaker 03

  Have you ever tried to use a drinking straw?

• 10:16Speaker 02

  You can't.

• 10:16Speaker 03

  Have you ever tried to suck the drinking straw into your mouth? It is physically impossible. Because it's not solid.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Eat or err.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  And there's a goddamn hole in the middle, which everyone says, that's the beauty of bucatini, you get sauce in the middle. Fuck bucatini and the sauce in the middle, you can't get the goddamn thing in your mouth.

• 10:32Dan Pashman?

  So Francis says you can't slurp bucatini because it's hollow. But Evan was not gonna let Francis have the last word.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  This is what I love about bucatini, is you will go to restaurants in Rome, and you will see men, businessmen, wearing beautiful white starched shirts, order a plate of bucatini a la mitriciana, which is like a lot of-

• 10:53Dan Pashman?

  Perfect in every way, except for-

• 10:54Speaker 02

  A lot of oil, a lot of tomatoes. So there's a very high percentage that you will get that on your body, which for an Italian man, is like not a good thing. And you see them take their ties and flip them over their shoulder, and hunch over that bowl, and carefully twirl, not like a child's spaghetti fork filled with pasta, but like a couple noodles. And then delicately, for a man, put it in their mouth. And chew. Nobody is trying to slurp it, because everybody knows you can't suck up a straw.

• 11:36Dan Pashman?

  I don't see why this is my problem.

• 11:42Dan Pashman?

  Why do you think that slurping is your preferred technique of eating a long noodle?

• 11:47Speaker 03

  That feeling, like, look, you're inhaling the pasta, right? In this like, almost literal way. You're taking it in, you're one with the world. How many breathing exercises have you done today?

• 11:58Speaker 02

  None.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Um, you're taking in from, you're taking what the earth is giving you. You're feeling oneness and gratitude.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  And you can do that while getting pasta in your mouth at the same time.

• 12:17Dan Pashman?

  Well, but another argument for slurping, Francis, would, might be that with noodle soups, let's say with Asian noodle soups, one of the advantages of slurping is that it creates a sort of virtuous cycle of airflow. You know, a lot of people think that you smell with the front of your nose when you taste, but actually, the smell that you mostly taste with isn't the back of your throat. It's the aromas going up the back of your throat into your nose, which is why slurping soup makes it taste better. So I wonder if the fact that you can't slurp bucatini is a problem for that reason. It doesn't have that Asian noodle soup advantage. Evan, how do you respond?

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Well, I do find it fascinating, I just started thinking about it as we're talking, that most Asian noodles are long noodles, for the most part.

• 12:56Dan Pashman?

  For the most part, yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  For the most part. There's no wagon wheels. There's no quills. There's no fusilli, which I think is the stupidest shape ever. Ooh. So if you grow up, did you, you grew up starting with noodles?

• 13:13Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 13:13Dan Pashman?

  Yeah.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  In broths, often?

• 13:15Speaker 03

  Often, yeah.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  So I would understand that you have a slurping constitution.

• 13:22Dan Pashman?

  Do you think there's some merit to that idea, Francis?

• 13:24Speaker 03

  I think it's probably valid. I think certainly for like, my psychological, like-

• 13:29Speaker 02

  The comfort things.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it is true that most noodles I grew up with are slurpy type noodles.

• 13:36Dan Pashman?

  If there's another shape that can be just as tooth sinkable as bucatini, that will be more forkable, then it's better than bucatini.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Spagattoni.

• 13:42Dan Pashman?

  Okay, so then-

• 13:43Speaker 02

  But it's not better, it's just another shape. I mean, it's like, if you look at the dictionary, the vocabolario, if you will.

• 13:52Dan Pashman?

  Now you're just making up words.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  The Italian-

• 13:54Dan Pashman?

  I don't believe that one for a second.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  Of Italian pasta shapes, it's just this incredible expression of human ingenuity with the simplest ingredients possible. And fantasy, just playing. So sometimes, there are really, really fun shapes that have excellent forkability, but you don't necessarily want to eat them all the time, like wagon wheels. Wagon wheels, for most of us, we haven't had them as adults, but I, you know, every once in a while, I have them. And I'm like, wow, this is such a great shape. Why don't I eat this more often? But then, I just don't.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  Like, most traditional pasta shapes have a traditional sauce that they pair with, right? Because they're regional, and like, this was the sauce of our region, da-da-da. What's the traditional way to eat wagon wheels?

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Well, either in broth, or with, strangely enough, with, like a creamy ragù. So when it's in the bowl, you see the little bits of browned meat, like the separated pieces of meat, that are held together with the sauce. They like cling to the insides of the spokes. And it's just, it's just really fun to eat.

• 15:02Dan Pashman?

  Is the wagon wheel like a legit, old-school shape?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's called rotelle, it's an actual Italian shape.

• 15:09Dan Pashman?

  And what is the wagon, like, I, I gotta, it's hard for me to get behind the wagon wheel.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 15:14Dan Pashman?

  I mean-

• 15:15Speaker 03

  What's your problem with the wagon wheel?

• 15:16Speaker 02

  So what do you like?

• 15:16Dan Pashman?

  Does it turn mushy?

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Do you have macaroni and cheese al dente?

• 15:21Dan Pashman?

  When I can.

• 15:23Speaker 02

  That's weird.

• 15:26Dan Pashman?

  You, oh, when would you, why would you ever turn down tooth sinkability when you can have it, Evan?

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Well, it's just a different kind of food. Even within Italy, the way people like their pasta cooked varies region to region.

• 15:41Dan Pashman?

  And some of the research we've done on this forkful, you know, sensory scientists say that research shows that we like dynamic contrast in bites. We like bites that have multiple textures together in the same bite.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 15:53Dan Pashman?

  One of the problems with a lot of symmetrical pastas is even if it's cooked just right, it might be the perfect tooth sinkability, but every bite will be the same.

• 16:01Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 16:02Dan Pashman?

  That's why I think maybe there's not enough asymmetrical pastas out there. What do you guys think?

• 16:06Speaker 02

  I think that's interesting. Most of the pastas I find myself eating are definitely symmetrical. But I do love eating things in which every bite is slightly different. Give me an example of an industrial shape, like elicoidi. Have you ever seen those? They're like a more modern shape. They look like, or radiatori, like radiators.

• 16:30Dan Pashman?

  Right. That is a great shape, though, because it, I mean, that is really, I think, the pinnacle of saucability of all shapes is radiatori. No, no shape is more saucable than radiatori.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  Well, some people would say that about fusilli, which I also think is its downfall, but that's a whole other conversation.

• 16:47Dan Pashman?

  Well, it doesn't have enough body to stand up to the sauce. I want to return to a question about saucability, in particular ridges. Evan, you said, and I agree, that anytime you're gonna have ridges around the outside of your pasta, you want that because it increases surface area and increases sauce adhesion. Is there ever a time when you would want plain penne over penne rigate? Which is ridged penne? Francis, what do you think?

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Let me back up a little bit, and talk about your three criteria. I think they sound valid, but I think they don't actually encapsulate the universe of pleasure that pasta and noodles can exist in, right? I think the suggestion is that there is an, there's like an ultimate form, and that ultimate form produces the most pleasure. But I think, if we open our minds a little bit, still hate bucatini. We can accept that there are lots of different ways for a pasta to be pleasurable. And if you're asking me about smooth penne versus ridged penne, yeah, the smooth is never gonna have the same kind of like, you know, saucability, right?

• 17:50Speaker 03

  But what if, what if, what you want in that moment was really to eat the pasta? And the sauce was just helping the pasta along, rather than the other way around? And I think of like, a really beautiful, like, papardelle, right? A really beautiful, fresh papardelle. So often, when it's like made well, I really just want to eat the pasta, and I want to feel the texture of the pasta, I want to-

• 18:13Dan Pashman?

  That's the wide, flat one for folks who know all their shapes.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. And sometimes they're like, you know, about an inch wide-ish.

• 18:19Dan Pashman?

  Sometimes they're even wider.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, then they're like, kinda hard to eat. Then it's like eating a rug. It's like, oh, it's a long rug, that's delicious.

• 18:28Dan Pashman?

  I'm not suggesting that there is only one shape that's better than all the others. I agree that different shapes have different strengths and weaknesses, but I also think that like, in the entire universe of shapes, some are better than others, demonstrably better than others. They're not all equal. It's not like every shape has a place, like there's-

• 18:45Speaker 02

  No, literally, every shape has a place.

• 18:49Dan Pashman?

  When would you eat penne over penne rigate?

• 18:53Speaker 02

  Well, penne lisci, which is the penne that doesn't have the ridges, and is sometimes- And is sometimes called mastacoli, or also zitti, is often used in like, baked pasta dishes that aren't lasagna. You take your, your penne that don't have ridges, you cook them, you put them in cold water, then you add your sauce, your cheese, your whatever else you want. You pack it into your, your baking dish, cover it with Parmesan, you put it in the oven. And then, for some reason, the lisci stays more, it has more form,

• 19:33Speaker 02

  precisely because it hasn't absorbed as much sauce as the rigate. What do you say, that, Mr. Pasta Engineer Man?

• 19:44Dan Pashman?

  I would say that's a good point. I will take that under advisement.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  For those of you home, you can't see Dan's guts falling all over the floor from that complete evisceration. Oh my god.

• 19:59Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, if you thought we were done talking about slurping, you were wrong. We go deep on the best approach to eating Asian noodle soups, and take questions from the audience. Stick around.

• 20:24Dan Pashman?

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• 21:48Dan Pashman?

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• 22:30Dan Pashman?

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• 23:03Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to The Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman, and in honor of National Pasta Month, I want to remind you, in case you forgot, that I invented a shape of pasta. As you probably well know by now, it is specially designed to maximize forkability, saucability, and tooth sinkability. And if I can just be a little immodest for a minute, I think it's still one of the best pasta shapes out there. So stock up in time for the fall season. It also makes a great stocking stuffer. Place your orders now at sfoglini.com. That's S-F-O-G-L-I-N-I.com. All right, let's get back to our live event about pasta shapes. In both Italian pasta and in Asian noodles, there's a lot of tradition, a lot of beautiful tradition.

• 23:47Dan Pashman?

  But I do wonder if sometimes certain traditions can be a barrier to progress, to change new ideas.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Gentrifying the pasta conversation.

• 23:59Dan Pashman?

  Well, for instance, here's one rule that I've heard that I don't understand. When the pasta comes to me and it's been served to me, and if it's paparazzi or some other shit that's especially large or long, and it's lacking in forkability, why is it so wrong for me to cut it?

• 24:21Dan Pashman?

  Well, how do you eat paparazzi when it's, one is three inches wide and two feet long?

• 24:25Speaker 02

  I'd cut it and feel shame.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  Here's the question, is biting it?

• 24:31Speaker 02

  No, but you can bite it, yeah.

• 24:33Dan Pashman?

  So why is that different? If you bite it and half it falls back into the plate, that was the same thing as cutting it.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  You cannot fall back in the plate, you know, you have to eat it correctly, and it has to be beautiful as you're doing it, you know?

• 24:45Dan Pashman?

  Well, I wanted to hear from each of you, what's one pasta or noodle tradition that you feel should be discarded?

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Angel hair pasta in a bowl with no broth with tomato sauce.

• 25:01Speaker 02

  Thank you, thank you.

• 25:02Dan Pashman?

  Why?

• 25:03Speaker 02

  Because angel hair pasta was never meant to be a pasta shoot, a dry, a pasta served dry just with sauce. It's meant to be in a broth.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  Really?

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, the 80s notwithstanding.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, really? That's amazing. You're telling me vermicelli was meant to be like pho?

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Well, angel hair, yeah. Vermicelli, sometimes some places call spaghetti vermicelli, but yes, very, very thin, fine noodles is meant to be in a broth, yes.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  This is blowing my mind, because if you walk into an Asian grocery and you go into the noodle aisle-

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Which is unbelievable.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  And there are so many shapes-

• 25:43Speaker 02

  So many.

• 25:44Speaker 03

  And, you know, and obviously not, some flour, some rice, some mung beans, some-

• 25:48Speaker 02

  And that's the interesting thing about Asian noodles is that the actual dough has so much variability.

• 25:54Speaker 03

  Right, and it changes, like, it's really different textures and subtle ways that maybe are inarticulate, but they're, like, when they have an English label, 75% of them are called vermicelli for no discernible reason. But now I'm realizing that most of those noodles are meant to be served in broth. So maybe someone somewhere along the line was like, that's like a, you know, an Italian pasta that they serve in broth. My head is blowing up right now. Because I never knew why, like, rice sticks were called vermicelli, and why they were all called vermicelli.

• 26:26Dan Pashman?

  Right. So we talked a lot about strategies for eating pastas that are difficult to get on the fork, difficult to keep on the fork, difficult to not get messy. Let's talk briefly about strategies for Asian noodle soups.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  I'm such a bad slurper.

• 26:43Dan Pashman?

  You mean, like, you do it, but you don't do it well?

• 26:45Speaker 02

  No, I don't, I don't do it efficiently, and I'm constantly biting it, and parts are falling back in the bowl, which it makes me feel ashamed.

• 26:55Speaker 03

  Don't feel ashamed. We don't have rules that oppress people like that.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  You can cut the noodles if you want, whatever, do your thing, girl. No, no, seriousness.

• 27:11Dan Pashman?

  Tell us about your approach.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  I don't have like a, like a-

• 27:15Speaker 02

  He learned too early to know what the approach is. It's like a fluency.

• 27:19Dan Pashman?

  Didn't you tell me you have some kind of system where you take the noodles and rest them up on top of, like a lily pad?

• 27:25Speaker 03

  Only for ramen. For whatever reason, I do this for ramen.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  You have a lily pad?

• 27:30Speaker 03

  I bring a lily pad with me. So the lily pad thing is when I'm eating ramen, I don't know exactly why I do this only for ramen, but I have it, like, sort of pounded in my head, that the noodles in ramen should be protected. And so I protect them by, you know, you get the big steaming bowl, and the first thing I do, usually there's like a slice or two of like, you know, pork belly or something, you know, some kind of meaty garnish that's usually a nice flat thing, so it takes up like a fair amount of surface area in the bowl. And so what I do is I go in and I, with my chopsticks, and I take the entire tangle of noodles, and I lift them up out of the bowl for just a second, just enough for it to like lose a few degrees of heat. And then I sort of gently rest them back on top of the bowl, and hopefully, most of

• 28:14Speaker 03

  them will catch on to, like, the pork, and like, it'll sort of rest, and it'll sit outside of the soup. So I can then eat the noodles and eat the soup without having to worry about the noodles sitting in the hot soup and absorbing more of that broth and getting softer.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  It's a sweet move.

• 28:34Dan Pashman?

  So-

• 28:34Speaker 03

  We can do this.

• 28:35Dan Pashman?

  It's just about time for us to go to the town hall portion of this debate, but before we do, I want to hear quickly from each of you. Bucatini aside, give me one shape that you feel like should just be eliminated from the canon, and one shape that you think is very underrated that requires more attention.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Fusilli.

• 28:54Dan Pashman?

  That, fusilli, that's the corkscrew should be thrown in the garbage.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  See ya.

• 28:58Dan Pashman?

  All right. And Evan, what shape do you wish to elevate? Do you want more people to know about?

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Candele.

• 29:04Dan Pashman?

  Which one's that?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Candele are from Liguria, and they're usually made of egg pasta. They're like candles, they're very, very long, and they have a hole in the middle, but it's a really big hole, and the walls are really thin, so when you cook them, they collapse on themselves, and you're not supposed to cut them. But they're just so weird and wonderful, and they look gorgeous in a bowl, the tangle of them, and you can just serve somebody one candle. They're just fun.

• 29:37Dan Pashman?

  How long is a typical can? Oh, like, over, like, a foot long? It's like a, like a scroll, almost.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:42Dan Pashman?

  Right. Francis, one shape you would get rid of, one shape you would elevate?

• 29:47Speaker 03

  All pasta shapes are wonderful, except for one.

• 29:50Dan Pashman?

  What about Pac-Man shapes?

• 29:53Speaker 03

  Oh, dude.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  Are you, any of you, do you, does anyone remember the Chef Boyardee, like pasta in a can, right? Like, did you ever remember when they had a Pac-Man version of them?

• 30:06Speaker 03

  People remember this?

• 30:07Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:09Speaker 03

  Okay, so I was, you know, yay big. I loved any form of, you know, western food, and, you know, so, so like, pasta in a can was totally like kind of my vibe. And when Pac-Man came out, forget it, because I like love Pac-Man, I'm like, oh my god, Pac-Man food, ahh! And it was like, and like the little meatballs were like the little, Pac-Man was eating the little meatballs in it, so like, these like weird, like, industrial food meatballs that were like not God's plan. And, uh, and so I loved that stuff. And one day, I was home, sick from school, and as a way to cheer me up, my mom made

• 30:52Speaker 03

  the Pac-Man Chef Boyardee for me with the meatballs, and I ate it, but remember, I was sick.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  That pleasure was robbed for me.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  That is not good.

• 31:05Speaker 03

  Forever.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  That is not a good look.

• 31:08Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, it's time to get the audience involved. That's after the break. Stick around.

• 31:15Dan Pashman?

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• 31:18Dan Pashman?

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• 32:16Speaker 01

  This podcast is supported by Nurtec ODT, Remedy Pant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time and throws everything off. So when migraine takes your time, take Nurtec. It's for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults. Nurtec can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtec is right for you because your time is for you, not migraine. Don't take if allergic to Nurtec ODT. Allergic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or throat. High blood pressure and Raynaud's Syndrome can occur.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Get help for high blood pressure, numbness, coolness, pain, or color changes in fingers and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-833-4-NURTEC or visit Nurtec.com. All right, back to your podcast, playlist, or whatever's keeping you going today.

• 33:21Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back. Let's return now to the bucatini dialogues with Evan Kleiman and Frances Lamb. All right, ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the audience participation portion of our program. Step right up, please tell us your name and ask your question.

• 33:34Speaker 05

  Hi, um, my nona was named after Mifalda, which is a specific type of pasta.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  That's so interesting.

• 33:42Dan Pashman?

  Come on.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Oh my God, why would they do that?

• 33:44Speaker 05

  Yes, her name was Mifalda. And I was wondering if you're gonna venture into the pastina world of the Italian pasta.

• 33:53Dan Pashman?

  Well, Evan, what are your thoughts on those?

• 33:55Speaker 02

  I love pastina so much. And when you find yourself in a store that has a large selection of pastina.

• 34:02Dan Pashman?

  And wait, I'm sorry, just define that term.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Pasta is little tiny pasta shapes, often used to introduce solid food to babies, and always served in broth. And, um.

• 34:15Speaker 03

  It's like the little stars and the little.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, little stars. It's where alphabet soup came from.

• 34:20Dan Pashman?

  A while back, I picked up some Hanukkah themed pasta shapes. They had like dreidels and Jewish stars, menorahs.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  That's hilarious.

• 34:27Dan Pashman?

  I got them at this, I don't know, have you guys heard about this really super high-end Italian market? It's called Bed Bath & Beyond.

• 34:36Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, so I found the beyond.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 34:44Dan Pashman?

  And, uh, yeah, my kids love the dreidels, but, uh, they lacked in two-sick ability, I'll be honest.

• 34:53Dan Pashman?

  Okay, please introduce yourself.

• 34:55Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Bernadette, and, um, my question is, earlier, very early on, you asked, Dan asked, I think, um, what sauce is best with spaghetti? And I was surprised that neither of you mentioned cacio e pepe.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  Oh, because I don't think of cacio e pepe with spaghetti.

• 35:10Speaker 05

  No?

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Mm-mm.

• 35:11Dan Pashman?

  You think of it with?

• 35:13Speaker 02

  Bucatini.

• 35:14Speaker 05

  Ah.

• 35:16Speaker 05

  And that is fair.

• 35:18Dan Pashman?

  It's just cheese and pepper, whatever.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  No, seriously, I mean, it's, it's, in Rome, it's like more commonly served with, with bucatini.

• 35:28Dan Pashman?

  But why is bucatini better than spaghetti for cacio e pepe, which is cheese and pepper?

• 35:34Speaker 02

  So actually, I wanted to say something about this. When we talk about sauce here, we tend to think about like sauce, like something that was bubbling in a cauldron, when really sauce just means condiments. And so there are a lot of sauces, um, traditional Italian sauces, that are just a group of ingredients that have very little adhesive quality, um, until you actually put it in a pan with a little bit of pasta water and maybe some additional butter or some additional oil, and then you create the adhesion. So for me, something like cacio e pepe, which is relatively simple, it's like one ingredient or, you know, with water, it just cries out for bucatini because bucatini has the like,

• 36:16Speaker 02

  the meatiness to, to deal with that cheese, which you would normally think of as being on a fresh pasta. I don't know, it's a rabbit hole, what can I tell you?

• 36:25Speaker 03

  Would you say that the traditional Italian method of saucing pasta, which is, like you said, not to actually douse it in sauce, but to just kind of lightly coat the noodles, means that the whole argument for bucatini being filled with sauce is a little bit BS?

• 36:40Speaker 02

  No, because.

• 36:41Speaker 03

  Just a little bit?

• 36:42Speaker 02

  No.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  Not really that much sauce to go in the thing?

• 36:44Speaker 02

  No, because actually, the whole point, it's the right amount of sauce for the noodle you're using. And so the idea is that the process, the process of saucing it, it should become one thing. Like, everybody's had the experience of having a bowl of spaghetti, twirling it, bringing it to your mouth, and then the sauce just goes bloop into the bowl. That's not pasta. That's not, that's not pasta.

• 37:10Dan Pashman?

  What, we got time for one more, one more audience question?

• 37:13Speaker 05

  Hello, my name is Allison and I am from Roosevelt Island. And I was wondering, I heard Evan speaking, that every pasta shape has a pasta sauce. When you're cooking yourself a pasta dinner, do you decide the sauce first or the pasta shape?

• 37:31Speaker 02

  I decide the dish, so it's, it's, it's a whole. They're not separate. It's something that is, it, it comes fully formed.

• 37:40Speaker 05

  You see it as a whole?

• 37:42Speaker 02

  I see it as a whole, yeah.

• 37:43Dan Pashman?

  Like the linguine vongole in the beach.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Exactly. Ooh, yum.

• 37:47Speaker 05

  Frances?

• 37:50Speaker 03

  Most frankly, it starts with what vegetables I have.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  In the fridge. And like, I gotta cook that tonight, I gotta cook that, I gotta cook that tonight. And then it goes from there to how am I gonna make it? Am I gonna cook it soft? Am I gonna cook in oil? Am I gonna get in butter? Am I gonna roast it and just kind of eat it like along with, with a very simple condiment like Evan said? Or do I wanna cook it into a sauce? Do I wanna take eggplant and cube it and cook it down until it's a puree and use that as a sauce? So it's not traditional cooking, it's kind of like whatever I can do to whatever vegetables I have lying around.

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Me too, because I mean, I, I will do anything not to go to the grocery store. I mean, anything. Like, I will make my own pasta rather than go to the grocery store. So, so, so it's not like I have 4,000 shapes in my pantry, right? I have a few bags of two or three long shapes and a few bags of short shapes.

• 38:41Dan Pashman?

  Well, we gotta wrap it up. I wanna thank you guys so much for joining me. Thank you all for coming out. Frances Lamb hosts the radio show and podcast The Splendid Table from American Public Media. Big hand for Frances Lamb.

• 38:57Dan Pashman?

  And all the way from California, Evan Kleiman hosts the radio show and podcast Good Food at LA's KCRW. Big hand for Evan Kleiman.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Those were definitely loud cheers.

• 39:10Dan Pashman?

  Thank you so much for coming out. Good night.

• 39:23Dan Pashman?

  This show is produced by me along with senior producer.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Emma Morgenstern.

• 39:27Dan Pashman?

  And producer. Andres O'Hara. Our editor is.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Tracy Samuelson.

• 39:31Dan Pashman?

  The show is mixed by. Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. Special thanks to the folks at Caveat, as well as Anne Sanni, Go Fan and Putu Buale, Frances Lamb and Evan Kleiman. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Daisy Rosario. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 39:48Speaker 05

  And I'm Noni from New York City, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 40:11Dan Pashman?

  This reheat was produced by.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Gianna Palmer.

• 40:14Dan Pashman?

  The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Emma Morgenstern.

• 40:19Dan Pashman?

  And senior producer. Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is. Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Sirius XM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, if you wanna hear new episodes of The Sporkful ad-free, subscribe to Sirius XM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts, or visit SiriusXM.com/podcastsplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 40:50Speaker 01

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• 41:20Speaker 01

  This podcast is supported by Nurtec ODT, Remedy Pant. We know you didn't ask for an interruption, but migraine doesn't wait for the right moment to interrupt either. It just barges in, takes your time and throws everything off. So when migraine takes your time, take Nurtec. It's for the acute treatment of migraine with or without aura in adults. Nurtec can provide pain relief in two hours, which can last up to two days. Ask your healthcare provider if Nurtec is right for you because your time is for you, not migraine. Don't take if allergic to Nurtec ODT. Allergic reactions can occur even days after use. Get help right away for trouble breathing, rash, swelling of face, mouth, tongue, or throat. High blood pressure and Raynaud's Syndrome can occur. Get help for high blood pressure, numbness, coolness, pain, or color changes in fingers

• 42:05Speaker 01

  and toes. Common side effect is nausea. For full prescribing information, call 1-833-4-NURTEC or visit Nurtec.com. All right, back to your podcast, playlist, or whatever's keeping you going today.