The Book of Pasta

Food critic Mackley offers a collection of noodle dishes from Italy, the Orient, Greece, the Middle East, North Africa, Scandinavia and North America. A step-by-step guide to making pasta at home is accompanied by a description of the myriad shapes and forms of pasta on the market. Mackley puts the pasta to inventive use in an avocado-and-orange-pasta salad, tarragon chicken salad, spinach pasta roll, Mongolian hot pot, Greek ravioli and spicy sesame noodles. Desserts range from the homey noodle pudding to a breathtaking chocolate spaghetti with white-chocolate sauce. The 100-odd recipes are written clearly enough to be useful to beginners but are imaginative enough to challenge serious cooks. (October)