One of the most fundamental tools of Italian cooking is the chitarra, or “guitar,” a long board strung with sharp wires used to create handmade pastas. Fabio Trabocchi, of Fiamma, has had his since he started culinary school; he bought it in Teramo, in Abruzzi, and has used it for his entire career. “It’s really like a guitar,” he says. “You have to keep the strings stretched, with the tension just right. But if you use it right, you get pasta that has a certain porosity that you could never get from a pasta machine. That makes it absorb the sauce better and gives it a rustic kind of flavor.” Trabocchi uses the chitarra most frequently on Fiamma’s carbonara, but he’s used it for hundreds of pastas over his career. “It’s from my home region,” he tells us. “I’ll always use it.”

In the wonderful world of pasta, there is the fresh (usually made with eggs and rolled-out), and there is the dried (usually eggless and extruded). And then there is the unusual hybrid of sorts that Marco Canora has recently introduced on his Insieme menu. While surfing the Web, as all blog-obsessed chefs are wont to do, Canora discovered an old Venetian–style hand-cranked pasta extruder known as the Bigolaro, a.k.a. the Torchio, and if he had his doubts about its decidedly low-tech looks, the price, at $280, was right. The rustic gadget, which was patented in 1875, clamps on to any sturdy tabletop, and although it requires the strength of two Greco–Roman wrestlers to operate, the results are worth the effort.