This is a story of pasta. In it, Guardian columnist and award-winning food writer Rachel Roddy condenses everything she has learned about Italy’s favourite food in a practical, easy-to-use and mouth-watering collection of over 120 essential pasta and sauce recipes.

Short essays weave together the history, culture and the everyday life of pasta shapes from the tip to the toe of Italy. There is pasta made with water, and pasta with egg; shapes made by hand and those rolled by machine; the long and the short; the rolled and the stretched; the twisted and the stuffed; the fresh and the dried. An A-Z of Pasta suggests how to match pasta shapes with sauces, and how to serve them. The recipes range from the familiar – pesto, rag and carbonara – to the unfamiliar (but thrilling) – ziti with onion and beef, scialatielli with sea bass and lemon; capelli d'angelo with leeks and saffron.

This is a mouthwatering guide to pasta from one of the best food writers of our time.