Inspired by the firm belief that spaghetti is far from the ideal shape for pasta, a man set out to create a perfectly shaped pasta. The result of his hard work is now known as cascatelli.

The story of how cascatelli came to be began in 2018, when Dan Pashman, the host of the James Beard and Webby Award-winning “Sporkful” podcast, made some harsh remarks about spaghetti, on the stage of the Caveat Theater, in front of a live audience. His comments got a lot of attention and inspired him to dedicate a lot of his time to researching pasta shapes in a quest to create the ideal pasta design, which needed to have an appealing texture, have the perfect bite, and, most importantly, hold the right amount of sauce. Believe it or not, he spent almost three years on this project.

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The small town of Nuoro, on Italy’s Sardinia island, is home to what many are calling the world’s rarest pasta, an intricate, hand-made treat that only a handful of people can make.

Known as su filindeu (in Sardinia’s Sardo dialect), or Fili di Dio (in Italian), and translated as threads of God, this traditional pasta had been linked to La Festa di San Francesco, an ancient religious ritual celebrated every year, in May. For the past two hundred years, the only way to try threads of god pasta was to complete a 33km pilgrimage on foot or horseback from Nuoro to the village of Lula. But because this sacred dish is in serious danger of becoming extinct, the only three women in the world who know how to make it, have been trying to save it by making it more accessible.

67-year-old named Paola Abraini picked up the skills to make threads of god pasta from her mother, who also learned them from her mother, and so on for many generations. However, only one of her two daughters knows the basic technique, but lacks the passion and the patience necessary to carry on the family tradition. The only other two women who she managed to pass on her knowledge to – Abraini’s niece and her sister-in-law – don’t have any daughters to pass the secrets to, so su filindeu is in grave danger of vanishing.

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Self-taught artist Vernon Spicer, from Alabama, uses pasta like spaghetti, macaroni, lasagna and noodles to create his detailed paintings.

I’ve seen some pretty unusual materials used in paintings, but pasta is definitely a first for me. 71-year-old Vernon Spicer, a Vietnam veteran and pastor at a church in Selma, Alabama, got the idea of using the brittle material from a dream he had one night. It woke me up one night,” he told the Montgomery Advertiser. “In it, I could see something that had a three-dimensional design, one that involved me using sticks to create.” Instead telling him to get over it, wife Audrey encouraged him to pursue the vision and suggested he replace the sticks with uncooked spaghetti. That’s how Vernon’s career as an amateur pasta artist began. Now, six years later, Spicer can create some pretty amazing works of art.

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Sergey Pakhomov, an artist from Russia’s Perm region has recently made headlines in his home country for using various types of pasta to make miniature models of cars, planes, boats and even a small pasta town.

If you’ve at least heard of Canada’s wacky Spaghetti Bridge Building Championship, then you already know pasta can also be used outside the kitchen. Take Sergey Pakhomov, an amateur artist who discovered Italian pasta is a great material for creating detailed miniature models. It all started six years ago, when Pakhomov was working for a PR company, and was asked to do a creative advertisement for a Russian macaroni company. He was brainstorming one night and came up with the idea of creating various thing out of macaroni. The advertisement campaign was eventually canceled, but the idea stuck with him, and after studying the works of other artists who had used stuff like vermicelli or rigatoni to make art, he decided to pursue a career in pasta models. After six years of experimenting with the strange medium, Sergey Pakhomov has an impressive collection of over 30 miniature pasta models, some of which are pretty complex.

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