Otherwise known as “little waterfalls” in Italian, cascatelli was created to be an accessible pasta option that enhances the eating experience with maximized “forkability,” “sauceability” and “toothsinkability.” Made from high-quality North American wheats and slow-dried for over nine hours, Pashman’s succeeds in hitting all three categories. We love that it has a good toothsomeness and clean pasta flavor, plus there are no eggs in the dough which keeps it from being too rich and tender. The thing that really sets apart this experimental pasta shape though is the texture. Not only do the ruffles, frills, right turns and curved shape keep sauce clinging on, but each bite becomes a sensory experience for your mouth too. This pasta is the perfect form to serve with a chunky sauce, Rather than finding bits of sauce at the bottom of your bowl like you would with other kinds of pasta, cascatelli will hold on effortlessly.

An herb that grows wild across Italy and rarely grown by farmers, nepitella (also known as calamint) recalls the aromatic freshness of mint with a touch of basil and oregano. It’s been incredibly popular in Tuscany for adding to food and drinks for centuries—particularly in soups and pasta sauces and dishes with meaty, earthy mushrooms. This one, though, is cultivated in small amounts in sun-dappled Sicily by a master botanist using traditional practices. The gently dried leaves have a bold, minty taste with very noticeable earthy herbal undertones: oregano, thyme, lavender basil and licorice. Compared to standard dried mint, it’s stronger and more earthy and herbal. Where mint can be sweet, this is savory. Where mint is bracing, this is earthy.

If you're taking the time to make homemade pasta, you definitely want a flour that will give the best flavor and texture. Made with an aromatic blend of White Sonora and Blue Beard Durum heritage wheats, Hayden's stone-ground Pasta Flour has nutty depth and a noticeably more complex flavor than other varieties.

It’s no secret that we love chilies at Milk Street, and the diavolicchi from Masseria Mirogallo are some of our favorites. Their name comes from the Italian word for devil because they are said to be hotter than hell, but they also have a bright flavor and sweet finish. Hand-selected and packed into jars with only wine vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil produced from the same farm on which the peppers were grown, diavolicchi's piquancy will define and sharpen a dish’s flavors. Use to cut through a starchy pasta dish, clarify a rich braise or stew or heighten sauces. And don’t throw out the oil! It’s terrific in vinaigrettes or used for sautéing vegetables, seafood and eggs.

Sfoglini’s Rye Trumpet pasta combines rye, a grain rarely found in store-bought noodles, and the hard-to-find trumpet shape for a toothsome, subtle pasta that clings beautifully to sauce (much like Sfoglini’s beloved Cascatelli). Stone-ground organic rye flour—milled in New York’s Hudson Valley—brings a subtly earthy, tangy taste to these flower-shaped trumpets without adding any grittiness. Sfoglini’s high-quality pastas are made traditionally, using just three organic ingredients and traditional bronze dies and plates for extruding, which helps sauce cling to the pasta. If you don’t have a local fresh pasta shop nearby for handmade specialty pasta, cooking with Sfoglini is the closest thing we’ve found to fresh noodles.

Pleasantly dense with a light chew, this beautiful pasta from Sfoglini elevates every dish we’ve tried it in. Finding saffron-infused pasta—especially in its dry form—is unusual, but it’s still incredibly versatile. This malloreddus, a hard-to-find Sardinian specialty pasta with a shape similar to gnocchi but hollow, has a sweet wheat flavor and the distinctive heady aroma and flavor of saffron. In fact, Sardinia has been known for centuries for its saffron; it was used to add color to pale pasta, so that it looked richer and like it contained eggs. Sfoglini’s high-quality pastas are made traditionally, using just three organic ingredients (including locally grown and milled grains) and traditional bronze dies and plates for extruding. Sfoglini is the closest thing to going to a local pasta shop for fresh, handmade pasta.

Spaccatelli—a scroll-like pasta also known as “priest’s collars”—gets dramatic color from cuttlefish ink, a common addition to pastas in southern and coastal Italy. Pastas infused with cuttlefish or squid ink tend to be paired with seafood in Italian cuisine, and this spaccatelli works beautifully with buttery seafood. We don’t find that the ink imparts an earthy or briny flavor—it tastes fairly neutral—or that it affects the texture of the pasta, which has the signature al dente chew we love in Sfoglini’s other pastas. We like that the pasta retains color after cooking. Sfoglini’s high-quality pastas are made traditionally, using just three organic ingredients (including locally grown and milled grains) and traditional bronze dies and plates for extruding, which helps sauce cling to the pasta. If you don’t have a local fresh pasta shop nearby for handmade specialty pasta, cooking with Sfoglini is the closest thing we’ve found to fresh noodles.

Mutti Tomato Paste is tomato paste as it was originally intended. Traditionally, this ingredient was made by drying tomato sauce on wooden boards in the sun; likewise, Mutti's modern version has a sun-dried flavor and caramelized richness reminiscent of molasses. Yet the tomato paste is not overly sweet—as tomatoes cook, their amino acids break down, which produces savory umami compounds. And unlike most tubed tomato pastes which are double-concentrated, this version is triple-concentrated, so a little goes a long way. We far prefer it to other tomato pastes in tubes, not to mention canned varieties that inevitably have a metallic taste from reacting with acidic tomato juice.