Put a spork in it
DAN PASHMAN, The Sporkful
WORK • Tuesday Routine
DAN PASHMAN • host, The Sporkful podcast; cookbook author
Neighborhood you work in: Bryant Park
It’s Tuesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
The Sporkful is produced by Stitcher, part of SiriusXM, and today I'm working at our Bryant Park office, where we also have our podcast recording studios. I usually work from home on Mondays, when I have a lot of meetings and set myself up for the week. Tuesdays, the whole Sporkful team usually comes in so we can see each other in person — and get something good to eat! There are usually some other podcast recordings going on, so there are hosts, guests, producers, and engineers coming in and out.
What’s on the agenda for today?
I'm getting ready to release my first cookbook. A little while back I launched a new shape of pasta called cascatelli, which took me three years to invent. It's specially designed to hold tons of sauce and have lots of very satisfying textures in your mouth. It went viral and was named one of Time Magazine's best inventions of 2021. But there was a problem. People were sending me photos of what they were making with it, and it was mostly tomato sauce, meat sauce, mac and cheese. I decided to write a cookbook to show people that there's so much more you can and should be putting on all your pasta shapes, not just cascatelli. The result is Anything's Pastable: 81 Inventive Pasta Recipes for Saucy People.
We've also produced a four-part Sporkful podcast series on the whole process of making the cookbook, from the highs and lows of recipe testing, to my research trip across Italy, to the agonizing decisions over the design of the cover.
What’s for lunch?
I'm going to eat the kung fu shrimp at Café China on West 37th Street. That place is an institution and the kung fu shrimp is my favorite dish on the menu. It's big fried shrimp with cayenne peppers, Sichuan peppercorns, and peanuts. Sometimes I make a jaunt from my office to Shuka, one of my very favorite restaurants in the city. Everything there is excellent, but I especially love the labne and the halloumi salad.
Any plans tonight?
Hoping to check out Café Mars in Gowanus, which everyone is raving about. If I stay home, I'll probably make the vodka sauce with tomato achaar from my cookbook, which my daughter Emily has been asking for.
What store or service do you always recommend?
I love my Amex Business Gold Card. I run my whole business through their business checking platform, and it's a pleasure to use. I used to use a major NYC bank and their business website was like using dialup AOL circa 1997. With Amex everything just works and the customer service is always great.