Evan Funke, owner of Felix Trattoria in Venice Beach, California, is a chef who loves pasta. He has traveled all over Italy, learning from the masters of pasta making and discovering the secrets of different shapes and sauces. The result of his odyssey is a docuseries, “The Shape of Pasta.”
In Funke’s “American Sfoglino”, his debut cookbook from 2019, the two-time James Beard Award-nominated chef shares classic techniques from his training in Emilia Romagna and provides accessible instructions for making his award-winning sfoglia (sheet pasta) where he shares his passion and knowledge with the world.
But he is not satisfied with that. He wants to find more pasta shapes, especially those that are rare or forgotten, and bring them back to life. He has a mission: to preserve the tradition and art of pasta making, and to celebrate its diversity and beauty. He is always on the lookout for new recipes, techniques, and stories that he can share with his fans and followers.
Pasta is an amazing product. With just a few ingredients—flour, water, and salt—a simple dough can be formed to create over 600 different types of pasta—and maybe more. No one knows the exact number– and Funke will not rest until he has discovered more.
There are long noodles, short tubes, flat sheets, little grains, and on and on. Each of these pasta shapes serves a different purpose. The ridges on one type are good for catching tomato sauce; another’s bulk will stand up to a creamy three-cheese sauce; and another might shine with a simple butter and herb sauce.
Evan’s quest for forgotten pasta shapes is showcased in a short-form docuseries, The Shape of Pasta, streaming on various platforms, among them on Roku.
The Venice Beach chef is out to learn about pasta designs that only a few remaining people alive know how to make, so he can preserve them. To find them he travels to remote towns through the Italian countryside—some virtually depopulated as young people have fled to more exciting and promising places, leaving the old people behind. It is these old people who are the repositories of a skill that will die with them that they in turn learned from their grandmothers and great-grandmothers.
Each episode lasts from 6 to 9 minutes. In that time, Funke meets up with a pasta-maker who creates her traditional pasta form with care and dedication. At first, Funke blunders along trying to keep up with the speed and dexterity of the “nonnas” who have been doing this for more than half a century each, some from the tender age of 3.
But in full concentration, he learns the shapes and the intricate skill it requires to reproduce them. In the process, we learn the fascinating stories that go along with them.
One shape, strangulet, comes from an Arbëreshë village in Calabria, so the resulting cuisine is a fusion of Italian and Albanian food. Nonna Cristina, one of the few women keeping the shape alive, uses a rare comb-like tool, called a pettine handed down in her family for more than a hundred years. Funke is in awe just holding it and he tears up in gratitude when she gifts it to him.
In some cases, the ingredients are distinctive, like the nearly-extinct tumminia grain in Sicily or the fava bean flour in the village in Basilicata, or the chestnut flour used in Liguria. For others, the shape itself is distinctive — spirals, ribbons, ribbed shells — or disks like the corzetti of Liguria, formed by a stamp of one’s distinctive family markings. The testaroli from Pontremoli in Tuscany, are the most unusual as they are really more a crêpe or pancake, cut into small diamond shapes.
In episode 1 Evan travels to Teana in Basilicata, to explore the nearly extinct pasta shape, Rasccatieddi di Miscchieddu.
Episode 2, travels to Roddino, in the Province of Cuneo (Piedmont) to uncover the secrets of the stuffed pasta, Agnolotti Del Pin.
Episode 3 follows Evan as he tracks down a woman in the mountain village of Civita in the province of Cosenza, and learns the secrets of the forgotten shape, Strangulet.
In episode 4 Evan visits Trapani, in Sicily, to talk about the main ingredient of pasta, the grain itself and its crucial importance in the handmade shape, Busiate.
Episode 5 finds him in Sori, in Liguria, in the village of Sori, where he joins the local nonnas as they tackle the sharp and twisted shape, trofie.
Evan hits Chiavari in episode 6 to craft the uniquely stamped pasta, Corzetti, a disk with an intricate design stamped onto its surface.
And finally, in episode 7 the chef heads to the Tuscan village of Pontremoli to unearth the most ancient pasta shape yet, Testaroli.
Episode 8 serves as a coda as Evan’s journey comes full circle back to his Venice Beach restaurant where he shares the new knowledge and the “nonnas’” special secrets with his kitchen staff who will bring all the ancient shapes to a new generation of pasta lovers.
