By Tim Carman, Washington Post

Until he apprenticed at Incanto in San Francisco, Michael Friedman considered fresh pasta sort of the holy grail of Italian cooking — something chefs should strive to make and perfect.

To make your own fresh pasta meant “you were at the height of your craft,” says Friedman, the chef behind the linguine, rigatoni, paccheri and other pastas at Red Hen in Bloomingdale. “I believed that for a really long time.”

But then Friedman worked with chef Chris Cosentino at the now-shuttered Incanto, and the Washingtonian discovered the many possibilities of dried pasta. Cosentino pushed the boundaries of the pasta that many simply shake from a box. He was extruding and drying pastas in-house, designing shapes unique to Incanto, such as a noodle that resembled tripe, which was then paired with two types of actual tripe, remembers Friedman.

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