Designing the
Perfect Pasta

Pashman spent weeks sketching dozens of pasta designs. Then he spoke with De Mari Pasta Dies, in Massachusetts. The company manufactures pasta dies, or molds, made of bronze metal. Pasta dough is squeezed through these molds to produce different shaped noodles.

De Mari told Pashman that his first designs were too complicated to make using a die. He tried again. After working for several more months, he finally had a shape De Mari said might work: a long half-tube with two ruffled edges.

De Mari created the pasta die. Then, Pashman partnered with Sfoglini (sfo-LEE-nee), a pasta maker in upstate New York. Once the die was ready, Sfoglini produced prototype pasta samples for Pashman to test out at home. 

But when he boiled the noodles, the pieces fell apart. Pashman realized the pasta needed to be shorter and thicker to prevent them from breaking.

It took months for De Mari to create a new metal die to make the pasta thicker. But making it shorter was easy. Sfoglini just had to cut the dough shorter as it came out from the die. 

In December 2020, new samples were delivered. Pashman cooked up the pasta. It was just as he had hoped—saucy, chewy, and easy to eat! Pashman named his creation cascatelli—a play on the Italian word (cascata) for “waterfall.” 

A few months later, all 3,700 boxes of cascatelli sold out online in less than two hours! Based on its popularity, Pashman hopes his pasta will stick around. “There are a lot of food fads done just to look cool,” he says. “I wanted to make something that was actually good to eat.” Mission accomplished!