Recipe: Massimo Bottura’s Spaghetti Caterse

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From Never Trust a Skinny Italian Chef (Phaidon, 2014), courtesy of Carlo Benvenuto and Phaidon


Massimo Bottura is the chef at Osteria Francescana, a three Michelin starred restaurant in Modena, Italy. The restaurant is currently ranked second in the world on the San Pellegrino 50 Best List. The evolution of his restaurant along with an exploration into his twenty-five year career are documented in his book Never Trust A Skinny Italian Chef.

In an interview with KCRW’s Evan Kleiman he says his food is not modernist, instead he wishes to “bring the best of the past into the future.” For Bottura, the farmers and the artisans are the true heroes of Italy and his goal as a chef is to respect the ingredients. In his introduction to this recipe he writes, “Cetarese Spaghetti is the perfect example of the generosity of humble ingredients: with so little you get so much.”

massimo and book copy
Portrait Courtesy of Paulo Terzi (The original image is no longer available, please contact KCRW if you need access to the original image.)