Chef Mario Batali's Culinary Road Trip

With all the time Mario spends in the kitchen, he's come up with a list of things he simply can't live without.

Although homemade pasta seems like it would be an all-day affair, Mario says one of his favorite kitchen appliances makes fresh pasta a breeze. "One of my favorite things is this pasta attachment on your Kitchen Aid mixer which makes making pasta twice as fast and twice as fun," he says. "What you really realize when you have something like that is that fresh pasta is literally eight to 10 minutes away."

Mario's next favorite thing looks like it came from the tool department—a Microplane cheese grater. Mario says the fine grate brings the best out of the cheese. "When you have this kind of cheese over stuff, you don't have to eat so much of the cheese and you get that incredible coverage and that delicate flavor," he says. "When you talk about really good Italian food and really good Spanish food, it's about balance. It's not so much about everything and lots of it. There's just the right amount of everything in the right way, and that's what makes it so good."