An A-Z of Pasta: Stories, Shapes, Sauces, Recipes

This is the story of pasta.

In it, Guardian columnist and award-winning food writer Rachel Roddy condenses everything she has learned about Italy's favourite food in a practical, easy-to-use and mouth-watering collection of 100 essential pasta and pasta sauce recipes.

Along with the recipes are short essays that weave together the history, culture and the everyday life of pasta shapes from the tip to the toe of Italy. There is pasta made with water, and pasta with egg; shapes made by hand and those rolled a by machine; the long and the short; the rolled and the stretched; the twisted and the stuffed; the fresh and the dried. The A-Z of Pasta tells you how to match pasta shapes with sauces, and how to serve them. The recipes range from the familiar - pesto, ragù and carbonara - to the unfamiliar (but thrilling). This is the definitive guide to pasta from one of the best food writers of our time.

'I love this book. Every story is a little gem - a beautiful hymn to each curl, twist and ribbon of pasta.' Nigel Slater

'Rachel Roddy describing how to boil potatoes would inspire me. There are very, very few who possess such a supremely uncluttered culinary voice as hers, just now' Simon Hopkinson

'Rachel Roddy's writing is as absorbing as any novel' Russell Norman, author of Polpo

'Roddy is a gifted storyteller, and a masterful hand with simple ingredients' Guardian Cook