A man created what is probably the perfectly shaped pasta known as cascatelli. Beginning in 2018, Dan Pashman, the host of James Beard and Webby Award-winning ‘Sporkful’ podcast made comments about spaghetti.
“I’m just gonna go ahead and say it, spaghetti sucks,” Pashman famously said on the stage of New York’s Caveat Theater. “It’s round on the outside, which means it is a low surface area in relation to the volume, which means that sauce doesn’t adhere to it well. It means less of it contacts your teeth when you first bite it.”
His comments met with laughter. But it inspired him to dedicate a lot of his time to researching pasta shapes in a quest to create the ideal pasta design, which needed to have an appealing texture, have the perfect bite, and, most importantly, hold the right amount of sauce. Believe it or not, he spent almost three years on this project – ‘Mission ImPASTAble’. It became a five-part saga podcast where he took a trip to Pasta Lab at North Dakota State University- the only pasta dies maker in the US. He debated about existing pasta shapes with other food professionals until cascatelli was born.
The Sporkful host-based the design on three main principles: 1) Sauceability: how readily sauce adheres to the shape; 2) Forkability: how easy it is to get the shape on your fork and keep it there; 3) Toothsinkability: how satisfying it is to sink your teeth into it.
It is comma-shaped with grooved ridges and a central ‘sauce trough’. This design is to hold the right amount of sauce and also have the perfect bite. Sfoglini sells this for $4.99 (RM 20.67) per pound. It became a hit and is currently sold out.
Source: Oddity Central