When Matteo Lane isn’t performing his distinct model of scathing but honest stand-up, he’s busy consuming pasta — and being opinionated about pasta. The Chicago-born, New York Metropolis-based comic describes himself as an “Italian, Irish, Mexican gay,” and brings all of that cultural expertise, plus an entire lot of humor, to his debut cookbook, Your Pasta Sucks.
When you’re a fan of Lane, you’ve doubtless seen him cook dinner pasta on his YouTube channel, the place he makes the whole lot from pancakes to pasta carbonara for his million-plus subscribers on the platform. It was that have of cooking on YouTube — and seeing viewers recreate his recipes — that made Lane assume that he may really write a cookbook. “It was very unintentional once I began on YouTube, to be sincere,” Lane says. “I began making the issues I knew the right way to make, like carbonara, amatriciana, cacio e pepe, and simply chatting whereas I’d cook dinner on digicam. Then individuals began making my recipes. They had been sending me photos, and actually letting me know that they had been into it.”
Your Pasta Sucks is an element cookbook, half autobiography. The ebook traces Lane’s adoration of pasta from slurping tacky noodles in his mom Cherie’s kitchen within the Chicago suburbs, to a summer time spent learning and falling in love with eggplant Parmigiana in Umbria, as much as making cacio e pepe in his present New York Metropolis house kitchen. Alongside the pastas, the ebook comprises recipes for the whole lot it’s worthwhile to complement a hearty, family-style Italian dinner, together with the recipes for his grandmother’s Italian dressing and his mother’s tiramisu.
Forward of the ebook’s launch, set for April 2025 by way of Chronicle Books, Eater sat down to speak with Lane about why he determined to jot down a cookbook, how he wove his identification and his household into the pages of Your Pasta Sucks, and what makes for the right bowl of pasta.
Eater: You describe Your Pasta Sucks as a “cookbook,” in quotes. What do you assume makes it completely different from a standard cookbook?
Matteo Lane: A few causes. I’m attempting to let anyone know that in the event that they don’t know the right way to do pasta, they usually’re within the cookbook part, it in all probability implies that their pasta sucks. And two, I’m attempting to make a joke that this can be a quote-unquote cookbook as a result of I’m a comic, and the ebook is a mixture of tales and real recipes. However it’s not a Martha Stewart, “right here’s 870 recipes together with 360 recipes for crostini you possibly can serve at a cocktail party” sort of ebook. It’s fewer recipes, however the ones I’ve chosen are genuine to my household, each in Italy and in the US.
Most of the recipes within the ebook name for dry pasta, not contemporary. Was {that a} acutely aware option to make the recipes extra accessible?
I can undoubtedly make ravioli [from scratch] and do the entire hand-rolled pasta factor, however actually, I believe the recipes on this ebook are for individuals who wish to make good meals with out being overzealous. It’s additionally true that I’m a giant dry pasta fan. Persons are form of confused and assume one is best than the opposite, however in actuality, they’re simply completely different. Even for me, if I’m going to be cooking at residence, I’m gonna use dry pasta for the whole lot.
In Your Pasta Sucks, your loved ones members — particularly your mother, grandmother, and sister — are rendered in hilariously affectionate element. Why was it essential to you that this ebook showcase their recipes?
The writing course of for one thing like that is so lengthy, and once I lastly acquired the ebook again and noticed the whole lot collectively, it was emotional. My grandmother and my great-grandmother each had actually powerful lives, and I don’t assume that they might have ever thought that their recipes could be printed. I acquired emotional simply excited about it. Even the hand actions that I’m utilizing to make meatballs are the identical ones that my mother used, and those her mother used, and so forth. It’s the best approach to move down custom, and it was enjoyable for me to undergo and mix my household’s historical past with these recipes. After I take into consideration my household or meals, they’re simply completely intertwined.
There are simply so many reminiscences connected to cooking, and I believe that’s a giant a part of being half of a big Italian household that I wish to share with different individuals. As I’ve grown up, I’ve realized that different individuals don’t have the identical relationship with meals that I do. A odor to me is household, a style is a reminiscence, and that’s what’s nice about cooking.
You admit you can be a bit explicit — or in your personal phrases, “bitchy” — about good pasta. What do you assume makes for an ideal bowl of pasta?
The primary element for consuming an ideal bowl of pasta is to be consuming that pasta in Rome, but when that’s not an possibility, it’s actually all about taking pasta extra significantly. Pasta has been type of watered down because it’s traveled world wide. It’s seen as extra of a enjoyable “sponge,” and everybody’s obsessive about the sauce. However if you go to Italy, the pasta itself is the star, the form of the pasta issues. You must care about flavoring it. You wish to deal with cooking pasta virtually such as you would cooking a steak. There are loads of little issues sitting underneath your nostril in terms of cooking pasta that most individuals overlook. And when [home cooks] begin implementing these small issues, they see large modifications of their pasta, they usually view it in a very completely different method.
You’re a humorist, not knowledgeable chef. Was it intimidating so that you can strategy recipe testing for the ebook and ensuring that your recipes are in a position to produce constant outcomes for residence cooks?
That was the exhausting factor. I grew up simply cooking with my mother and seeing the whole lot by eye, which I believe is extraordinarily widespread in cultures the place individuals learn to cook dinner from their dad and mom. While you’ve been doing one thing because you had been a child, it’s exhausting to trip and determine the precise correct quantity of Parmesan cheese. I can’t simply say “eyeball it,” as a result of that doesn’t assist anybody. The storytelling a part of the ebook was simple, that’s one thing I already do each night time. However determining all of the recipes? Oh my God. It was overwhelming, however we figured it out.
You observe within the ebook that you’ve a robust aversion to one-pot pasta recipes? Why is that?
Pay attention, I perceive eager to make a fast meal if you’ve acquired a big household. I get wanting to simply throw the whole lot in a pot and never give it some thought. I got here from a household that had no cash, and there have been 1,000,000 cousins round. Our dad and mom and my aunts and uncles would simply line us up like we had been within the military to feed us lunch. However I believe for those who’re actually eager to make higher pasta, and also you’re searching for recipes, that signifies that you simply’re attempting to boost what you already learn about cooking. The enjoyment of cooking is definitely cooking. While you’re doing a one-pot pasta, you’re simply throwing elements collectively and leaving out what makes cooking particular.
Do you’re feeling like your ebook is a tribute to old-school Italian cooking, or does it search to discover a extra fashionable model of the delicacies?
I believe it’s a mixture of each, for higher and for worse. [And to me,] that’s Italy. Italy is a rustic that’s reconciling with the previous and being fashionable. Custom weighs tremendous heavy on Italians, but they’re at all times attempting to herald one thing new. [Sometimes,] there’s something cute about saying, “Hey, I made these meatballs this manner as a result of my Nonna did,” versus, “I made a decision to strive one thing new.” That form of back-and-forth is simply Italy. It’s a rustic type of confused by itself.
And actually, it is smart. When you dwell in Rome, how do you continuously preserve shifting ahead when your home is subsequent to a 2,000-year-old monument? It’s simply the way in which it’s. I don’t thoughts when individuals get defensive of their Nonna’s recipes and consider that they’re the very best. What they’re actually attempting to say is that they love their household, they love their grandma, they usually’re actually happy with how they had been raised. That’s what they’re really saying, and nobody ought to take offense to it.
