Excellent! ( )

A book for an urban kitchen

The publisher's blurb calls this an "elevated" guide to pasta. If "elevated" means "complex and difficult" then the blurb is spot on. This is not beginning cookery.

A colleague of mine who lived alone and had a job with regular hours, once told that she always made pasta from scratch. She said it took very little time and she loved doing it. If you often make pasta, then rush out and buy this book (the physical book, I think, not the ebook). If you do not want to make the pasta, then consider whether your alternatives – locally-made fresh pasta or high-quality dried pasta – will suffice. Making these recipes with discount pasta is likely to be disappointing.

Consider your sources of fresh ingredients too. Many of the ingredients Mr. McNaughton calls for are exotic, like bitter honey or burrata (a special kind of mozzarella) and are sourced at specialty grocers and super-duper farmers markets. Even the Meyer lemons that are everywhere in San Francisco, the home of Flour + Water restaurant, are not available in the rest of the country. I could not make many of these recipes in my East Coast home town and I can make none of them in the country where I currently live.

These caveats aside, if you aspire to the heights of modern pasta preparation then I think you probably should have this book on your shelf. Mr. McNaughton presents detailed instructions for making a wide range of plain and flavored pastas and then uses these pastas in interesting ways that are thoroughly modern (perhaps sometimes pretentiously modern) but rooted in traditional Italian cooking. Many of these recipes and techniques I had not seen before. Be aware, though, some of the recipes are over the top even for the most fanatical home cook.

The text of the book is interesting and nicely balances the recipes. The photos are beautiful and instructive.

I received an electronic review copy of "Flour and Water: Pasta" by Thomas McNaughton (Ten Speed Press) through NetGalley.com. ( )

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley to review and give my honest opinion. I was expecting another pasta cookbook but what I received was tantalisingly more. Flour and Water is the story of the US restaurant of the same name and its owners. I loved reading about the history of the dishes whilst learning how to make them. Flour and Water follow the time honoured tradition of using seasonal produce for their dishes. The recipes are all easy to follow and there is even a short cut tip for those who are in a hurry or don't want to make their own pasta. This book was a pleasant surprise and whet my appetite. ( )