Conceived by Here Design, an East London based design team who are no strangers to creating strong branding and some of the most desirable and stylish cookbooks around, the book provides a fresh approach to something we already thought we knew inside out. With other famous publications such as Ceviche’s bold modern take on Peruvian cuisine, to the feast for the eyes that is Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem, Here instinctively knows how to make food fashionable, and The Geometry of Pasta, with recipes by chef Jacob Kenedy and Caz Hildebrand at the helm of its creation and design, is quite something to behold. 

The Geometry of Pasta takes a familiar food combination, and delves into new depths to reveal a range of possibilities.The first edition of the book was published by Boxtree/Pan Macmillan in September 2011. With cosmopolitan cities around the world crammed to the brim with restaurants and food stalls selling every type of cuisine imaginable, not to mention the plethora of readily available food related information and recipes on the internet, food itself has almost been fetishized. The experience of eating has moved on from what it merely tastes like (although it obviously remains a key component) and now also entails the setting it is eaten in, the concept or idea behind it, and last but not least, how it is presented. 

Pasta is a familiar food to us all which at first seems very simple. However, it is not actually that easy to always get right and the combination of pasta, and the sauce that accompanies it, can range from a plate of something edible through to something mind-blowingly delicious. The Geometry of Pasta endeavours to explain how this can be achieved as it sets out to explain pasta in its entirety. Approaching the subject from a new angle, its design led approach views pasta as small pieces of design, where a range of shapes are illustrated through clever graphic black and white illustrations. This is as much a great book to look at for its illustrations and design as it is to delve into and enjoy exploring the subject matter.

Often viewed in an over complicated manner or treated with too flowery an approach food is unsurprisingly moving into new territory where more and more people are stripping things back and focusing on each single ingredient. Using strong graphic illustrations to explore an ingredient that is far more complex than first perceived but which, at the same time, can be simply delicious, this is a book that takes things back to basics in a visually stunning way.