Butterflies, Snails & Little Worms

This little volume is a multilingual visual dictionary of pasta names and shapes, featuring Steven Guarnaccia’s witty drawings along with easy-to-follow recipes that allow you to try out the various pasta shapes at home.

“Learning Italian, I fell in love first with the sound of the words. I learned all of the meanings of the names for pasta that were familiar to me (spaghetti, vermicelli, ziti) as well as those that weren’t (bucatini, fazzoletti, gigli). I loved the sound of the names but even more I loved the sheer visuality of their meanings. Before then, it hadn’t occurred to me that the names meant anything. Had you told me that I was eating little strings or worms, I would have thought you were pulling my leg. But my deeper Italian lesson was that though language is a pleasure, it’s only a diversion compared to the pleasures of the kitchen.”