30 DAYS OPEN PURCHASEItaly has had around seventy governments since the Second World War, which sounds like a lot until you count the pasta shapes. There the country is in the hundreds, and every region, village and nonna has firm opinions about which shape goes with which sauce. Your Atlas + comes from the factory with cutters for fettuccine, tagliolini and spaghetti, and that gets you a good way, but not all the way. With these extra cutters you click in a new shape in seconds and can suddenly cook most of the Italian pasta map at home, without having to form a coalition with anyone.
Spaghetti makes 2 mm round strands – the pasta the whole world thinks of when someone says pasta. Spaghetti alla chitarra cuts strands just as thick but square, traditionally made in Abruzzo by rolling the dough over strings stretched across a frame that looks like a guitar, hence the name. Vermicelli gives thin, round 1 mm strands and Capellini equally thin square ones, for broths and light sauces. Bigoli are thick, round strands of about 3.5 mm from the Veneto, Marcato's home region, with the kind of bite that stands up to a proper ragù or the classic anchovy and onion sauce. Linguine gives flat, slightly oval 3 mm ribbons and Trenette slightly sturdier 3.5 mm ribbons, both with roots in Liguria and both made for pesto.
Among the wider shapes, Pappardelle makes broad ribbons for game ragù and mushroom sauces. Mafaldine at 8 mm and Reginette at 12 mm have ruffled edges that catch the sauce. Mafaldine are named after Princess Mafalda of Savoy, and Reginette means roughly little queens, which makes them the only members of a royal family it's perfectly fine to slurp. Atlas Ravioli is something else entirely: you feed in a folded pasta sheet with the filling in between, and out comes a strip of filled ravioli that you just need to separate, without shaping a single cushion by hand.
The cutters attach to the machine in place of the included cutter and are driven by the crank. Most can also be run with the Pastadrive motor, but Ravioli, Mafaldine and Reginette are made to be cranked by hand. The cutters must never go in water. Let the dough residue dry and brush it off, and they'll last for many years.
Fits Marcato Atlas + and Atlas 150. Rollers in chrome-plated steel and anodised aluminium, scrapers in acetal plastic. Do not wash – brush clean. Made in Italy.
