Gifts for Pasta Lovers

^{Photos on this page are by the author, sockii, unless provided by Amazon, eBay or Zazzle product links.}

If you're assembling a pasta gift basket or assortment, of course you'll want to fill it with some wonderfully colorful, unusual noodles. Italian artisinal pasta producers today come up with truly unique and different flavors, patterns of colors, and delightful shapes you won't easily find elsewhere.

Delightful striped farfalle by Marella. Handmade using traditional methods and all natural ingredients - squid ink is used to achieve the striking black color. (Available in 1, 4, 8 or 16 packages at a time.)

Mexican hats by way of Italy? Absolutely, with these delightful pasta shapes featuring patterns of color from natural ingredients. Fill them with your favorite stuffing, or dress them lightly in cheese, oil and fresh herbs for a beautiful party dish!

For someone who is a "purist" and doesn't need lots of different colors and flavors, what about this sampler assortment from Montebello? Made in Italy, this pasta is organic, kosher, and made only from non-GMO wheat from Italy's Marche region.

• A. G. Ferrari

  This San Franscisco-based Italian importer has a wonderful selection of high-quality pasta products available to create your own gift assortment. I love their pestos and other unique sauces, too.

• Di Bruno Bothers

  A Philadelphia-based Italian gourmet shop. They offer many pasta products available via mail order if you can't get to one of their stores.

A pasta-themed cookbook is always a great gift for someone who loves to cook and eat at home, and experiment with new recipe ideas.

These titles would all make a great addition to a pasta-centric gift basket, or simply given alone as a wonderful gift that will get plenty of use in the future.

Some of them focus on traditional recipes for Italian pasta, others cover the globe to look at the way pasta and noodles are used world-wide.

I've focused here on books less about making (and using) your own homemade pasta but instead on using standard, dried noodles you can get just about anywhere.

(I'll have a section on pasta-making gifts later in this list...)

This delightful book includes over 100 recipes for pasta, both traditional and innovative. The award winning owners of Al Forno restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island share delights such as Pappardelle and Saffron-Scented Milk-Braised Chicken, and Spaghetti with Raw Cucumber and Basil. There's also useful tips on using up leftovers and what side dishes work well with each meal.

This book is a visual delight as well as an extremely useful guide to preparing all kinds of classic Italian pasta dishes. Author Guliano Hazan is the son of Marcella Hazan, author of some of the most highly regarded Italian cookbooks on the market today - so it's easy to see where his great talents come from! Every recipe is beautifully illustrate and ranges from classics like Bolognese Sauce to more unique innovations like Spaghetti with Leeks, Shallots and Red Onions.

Almost all Italian pasta dishes call for the use of olive oil, whether for sauteing vegetables, flavoring a tomato sauce, or as the simplest dressings of all: olive oil, spice and fresh herbs. Of course, especially in such "simple" dishes, the quality of the olive oil used is of paramount importance. I try to keep a variety of high quality extra virgin olive oils on hand in my kitchen at all times, some fruitier in flavor, some spicy, so I can finish off a pasta sauce with just the right oil as needed.

You can of course find many great high quality olive oils in specialty food shops; for a gift, I love giving "foodie" chefs I know a membership in Gourmet Cooking & Living's Olive Oil of the Month Club. Each month a different olive oil is chosen, all from small farms and producers in Italy - these are not oils you can easily find elsewhere! If you don't want to commit to such a long-term (and pricy) gift, you could also simply buy a great quality olive oil on Amazon, such as the one spotlighted here:

The perfect finishing touch on many pasta dishes is some fresh grated Parmesan or Grana Padano cheese. But a simple microplane or hand-grater can be messy and awkward at the table; not so a professional-quality grater by Zyliss. Perfect for grating hard cheeses, nuts, chocolate, lots of things for the kitchen or at the dinner table. And the drum and handle separate for easy cleaning as well!

The best way to present pasta is in a large, attractive serving bowl - one where you can easily toss and mix the sauce in with the noodles thoroughly. An authentic Italian-made pasta serving bowl is the perfect gift for anyone who loves to serve pasta at home. It can also be used as the "base" for an attractive gift basket or set. The dishes here are all Italian-made and decorated using traditional methods and classic designs.

Making pasta at home can be fun and easy, especially with one of the great machines on the market. A basic machine is not that expensive and a perfect gift for the home chef who wants to start experimenting with different flavors, cuts and varieties of pasta. Or, you can get more fancy and go for a high-end pasta extruder that will produce all kinds of different shapes and kinds of noodles.

This Italian-made model comes in both red and stainless steel finishes and is a classic - just like you'll find in many home kitchens all around Italy. It's a hand-cranked machine with attachable blades (sold separately) for classic flat cuts like spaghetti, linguini and ravioli.

Of course if you want to treat someone really special, a restaurant-quality pasta extruder might be the kind of kitchen gift that would be absolutely perfect! Learn more about one such extruder in the article linked below:

Monthly clubs are out there today for just about everything, and pasta is no exception.

Many different companies offer monthly clubs that provide uniquely flavored, shaped, or even fresh-made pasta noodles directly to your recipient every month. Some also include matched sauces with the noodles, or at least recipe and cooking suggestions to best enjoy the varieties offered.

I always find these clubs are a good idea for someone special, because it really is a gift that "keeps on giving" for as long as you wish. Every month there's a new surprise in the mail to be enjoyed for however long you choose, from a full year to just a few month's sampler. I have family members who love to cook subscribed to olive oil and cheese clubs already, and am thinking about adding a pasta club to at least one person's Christmas gift list this year.

What about you?