#eric wolfinger

[cathygeha]

REVIEW

American Sfoglino: A Master Class in Handmade Pasta

By Evan Funke

Photography by Eric Wolfinger

Having watched my Italian neighbor make pasta by hand when under four while living in Los Angeles I believe I fell in love with her and the pasta she made. I have made pasta with my daughter using a simple mechanical rolling device and found it an interesting experience BUT when I saw this book up for review I couldn’t resist.

This book is indeed a master class in the art of handmade pasta. Evan Funke’s journey to Italy and his study of the craft is fascinating as are the many interesting shapes of pasta he demonstrates making in the book. The four master dough recipes are shared: flour + water, egg, spinach and gnoocchi di ricotta. Many sauces recipes are given along with what pasta to serve them with. The tools and ingredients used to create the pastas are detailed. The photography was exquisite and I felt I could taste the food by reading the recipes and through the beauty of the photographs.

I don’t know that I would ever make pasta from scratch by hand on a regular basis as I do believe it would be labor intensive. That said, It was fascinating to find out how tubes are put into pasta, designs are put onto pasta and how fillings are done for a variety of shapes. There were shapes of pasta I have never seen and that was also a treat.

Did I enjoy this book? Yes

Would I buy this book for myself or a friend? Yes

In the links below there is a YouTube video showing the author making pasta as well as an event one can attend and information about the restaurant where this homemade pasta can be eaten.

Thank you to NetGalley and Chronicle Books for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43522419-american-sfoglino?ac=1&from_search=true

Description

This debut cookbook from Evan Funke, esteemed chef of L.A.'s Felix Trattoria, is a comprehensive guide to the best pasta in the world. Sharing classic techniques from his Emilia-Romagna training, Funke provides accessible instructions for making his award-winning sfoglia (sheet pasta) at home.

With little more than flour, eggs, and a rolling pin, home cooks can recreate 15 classic pasta shapes, spanning simple pappardelle to perfect tortelloni, plus recipes for a variety of generous dishes, from essential sauces and broths.

Stories from Italy and the kitchen at Felix Trattoria add the finishing touches to this master class in pasta, while sumptuous photographs and a bold package offer a feast for the eyes.

A Note From the Publisher

SFOGLIA (sfol-EE-a): A sheet of hand-rolled fresh pasta dough. SFOGLINO or SFOGLINA (sfol-YEE-no or sfol-YEE-na): A maker of fresh pasta sheets.

Links

Evan Funke and Gwyneth Paltrow Event - Sept 25 in New York - Purchase Tickets Here!

Video: Evan Funke

Felix Restaurant

[what-marsha-eats]

Cookbook Author Paula Wolfert

From the Web site Splendid Table

Photo by Eric Wolfinger

[seriouscrust]

Weekend Finds 4:30:17

[half][/half][half-last][/half-last] The past couple weeks have been more moving in, nesting, organizing drawers and building bookcases. That is, however, if you don’t count the jaunt down to the Bay area a couple weeks ago to visit my dad and stepmom, who were living there temporarily. We ate well (of course): highlights included State Bird Provisions and the Tartine Manufactory, both of which…

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[boredandinbed]

[happyofme]

[enterthehero]

Some Wine and Some Buns

I did a campaign for Robert Mondavi some time ago with Eric Wolfinger and the usual suspects. It involved a lot of epic setups, so we could improvise freely when it came shooting and still yielded shots that were both perfectly lit and but still felt fancy free. It spanned over four days in some of the most beautiful corners of Big Sur. Here's a little taste of it, for one of the ads that never officially launched, set to the music of Grand Hallway.

And, far more recently, Eric Wolfinger started a column in local tastemaker magazine 7x7 called From Scratch, where he delves into processes for foods and drinks that fascinate him. He'd met Mama at the Slanted Door Commissary when he shot Charles Phan's Vietnamese Home Cooking. She was his aunt who ran a little commissary full of mamas 'round her age and shape, and each morning they made 3,000 delicious buns, rolls, and tamales from scratch. Here you go:

[enterthehero]

If I Be Wrong

You've made it! the NPR premiere of If I Be Wrong, directed by me and starring Wolf Larsen drops today.

my little statement I had to write for NPR:

My dear friend and anti-muse Wolf Larsen asked me to make a music video for her. It was nerve-wracking. In the four years I've known her, I've heard about the most impressive feats by some of her closest friends, many of which through traditional news outlets. Her friends make the TED Conference look like The Gathering of Juggalos1, and I know for a fact that she's got at least ten filmmakers ready to knock a music video out of the park for her. I specialized in Hong Kong style fight choreography and naturally-lit food cinematography, neither of which grabbed her. She asked if I was up for a seven-and-a-half minute number titled “If I Be Wrong”, a song about a complicated breakup, honoring the confusion, second guessing, and the ultimate trigger-pulling that breakups were made of. I'd only been in one relationship in my whole life, and that one lasted maybe four weeks, with a very happy and amiable end, but I'd read a few novels and had a functional grasp of what she was talking about.

This much I knew: I wasn't going to take this one easy. A tough song about a tough breakup dictated a tough shoot. I had the elements lined up against me – the length of the song, the lack of any budget, the quick turnaround, the total unavailability of the singer – I had no interest in making any of this easier for myself. I began pitching concepts to Wolf; she demanded, again and again, that I'd keep it simple. I would like to, I said to her, but it was going to be hard work. If shooting stunt guys and sexy chefs taught me anything, it was that stories weren't merely told through lights, makeup, and acting- they were also dictated by the process. An film production of any kind is comprised mainly of a series of banal tasks – somebody walks to a place, picks a thing up, looks at a person, says a sentence...etc., and it takes a very focused director and disciplined crew to stay on course from one shot to the next, so the story may shine through in every shot. While developing that skill, I relied on the process itself to substitute for Wolf's lot.

And the rest fell in place. I dusted off a concept that had its origin as a visual gimmick for a hip hop video, kept the parts that still interested me years later, pitched it to my trusty producer Eric (who underwrote half of the budget because how Wolf's voice steadied him), roped in the antique shop owner Jon (whose space, I have to admit, did make everything a bit easier), then enlisted a Bolivian documentarian named Tupac, a pair of Spanish lovebirds who were projection experts but were parting in two days, a dancer who could fall asleep on any surface, a trio of classically trained musicians who were brothers, an eight-year sober single mama who didn't know how good an actress she was, and a couple more friends who didn't know what they signed up for - and turned it into an improvised dance between a projected dancer, a weary woman, two cameras, one projectionist, and as many objects and items as we could, for three very cold and very long nights. There were also a last minute flight to DC and a two-month long editing process, all of which amounted to this video right here. It contains no computer-generated effect, though it's got plenty of artifacts from a tough shoot, as well as a very earnest dilemma, sung by a tough, tough girl.

That is why I can say this video is my favorite thing I've done.

1I mean no disrespect if you are, in fact, a juggalo, Cave In Rock whoop whoop.

[voguelivingmagazine]

In Vogue Living Sept/October 2011, David Prior paid tribute to Chez Panisse on its 40th birthday, tracing the evolution of how what began as an improbable, romantic neighbourhood café became the cradle of a revolution still transforming the way we eat.

Each day, produce of foraged blossoms, ABOVE, whichever vegetable is star on the menu that day  is hand-delivered to the kitchen, having been picked hours earlier on local farms.

From 'Organic Uprising', a story on page 63 of Vogue Living Sept/Oct 2011 and published on our blog here.

Photo by Eric Wolfinger.