From K

KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman, and you're listening to good food.

So pasta.

It's a joy to eat and a serious subject upon which to ponder, so much so that I once flew to New York to participate in a live debate on the merits or lack thereof of Bucatini.

So it was with great happiness that I received Rachel Roddy's book

an A to Z of pasta. Rachel English born living in Italy for the past 16 years is a marvelous writer. I eagerly await her

weekly column in The Guardian, a kitchen in Rome. My favorite part of the

Rachel Roddy experience is how honest she is about being an English woman living in Italy, a home cook, and a designer to just feed her family without a lot of unnecessary bells and whistles. Pasta has always taken front stage on her Instagram feed with real seemingly unstyled photos

that give you an idea of what it will actually look like if you make the dish.

Her latest book in A to Z of Pasta is a celebration of the food

many of us love best.

Hello.

Hello, it's lovely to be here.

Well, I'm just so happy to have you.

Having myself spent decades traveling back and forth to Italy,

I'm keenly aware of the deeply innate

understanding Italians have of how pasta shapes and sauces interact. How does a meal of pasta start for you with what's in the fridge, with an idea of a sauce, or with a shape?

Oh, that's a good question. I think a combination of the three actually. It was very interesting doing the book and I feel I need to say it's an A to Z of pasta, but actually it's 50 stories about 50 shapes when there are

1300 possible shapes. I mean some of them are as one shape with multiple names and

actually doing the book and looking at shapes

quite systematically meant that I did start from the shapes usually but I think it's a

combination of both and like you said at the beginning and that was such a lovely introduction, thank you.

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