Pasta is often at its very best when tossed with a simple sauce of just a few flavors, and finished with a quality olive oil and grated cheese. This vodka sauce is a good example. It begins as a butter, infused with the flavors of salty prosciutto, sweet tomato paste, and fresh parsley. When the [...]

I love the earthy combination of mushrooms and spinach, brought together with a little cream, and lightened with a drizzle of lemon juice. This combination is the base for a pasta dish I recently made, from the book A Cook’s Tour of Italy. Farfalle, the bowtie-shaped pasta, is a perfect match for this sauce, as [...]

The cooking of the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy is rich, satisfying, and flavorful. This is the land of the ragu, long simmered meat sauces that adorn two of the region’s culinary mainstays – silky fresh pasta and creamy polenta. Although the Bolognese meat ragu, from the region’s capital, is certainly the most famous, there [...]

Orecchiette, which means “little ears”, are a great pasta shape for vegetable pastas, as their rounded, earlobe shape catch the vegetables and the sauce. At the restaurant I work at now, we serve an orecchiette dish with sun-dried tomatoes and broccoli rabe, in a sauce of olive oil, garlic, and chile flakes. While browsing through [...]

Here is a simple, delicious pasta dish from Puglia, Italy. The noodles, Bucatini, are tossed with a sauce full of Southern Italian flavors: olive oil, garlic, chile pepper, sun-dried tomatoes, almonds, black olives, orange zest, and basil. There are so many great flavor combinations at work here. It may seem like a lot of ingredients [...]

Tagliatelle are the noodles of the Emilia-Romagna region of Northern Italy, and green tagliatelle are a brighter, more colorful version made by mixing pureed spinach (or spinach and watercress) into the eggs. I’ve been making a lot of tagliatelle, as my Imperia pasta maker came with a tagliatelle cutter, and I haven’t bought any other [...]

This is the second version of a pasta dish I made from a pork ragu. I had bought a half pork shoulder, braised it in white wine and chicken stock with fennel, red onion, carrots, and celery, shredded the meat, and continued to braise for a total of about four hours. I only paid about [...]

Pork ragu and other hearty meat sauces are one of the specialties of the Northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna. They are paired with tagliatelle, the regional pasta, a fresh string noodle about 1/4 inch thick. Pork shoulder is an excellent cut for a braised ragu – it’s inexpensive, and the long, slow cooking brings out [...]

Peperonata is one of the classic Italian pasta sauces, with many different variations. This ziti dish adds an interesting combination, green olives and toasted almonds, to the basic peperonata recipe. The result is a sweet, zesty sauce with a wonderful crunch that is not usually expected in a pasta sauce. Other than its use as [...]

This pasta is tossed with a deeply flavorful sauce that’s made from just a few common Italian ingredients. It shows how just a few ingredients in combination can transform an ordinary pasta into something special. The first step in this dish is to make oven-roasted tomato sauce. This in itself is a delicious pasta sauce. [...]

I subscribed to La Cucina Italiana Magazine recently, and my first issue has an article about 5 great Italian ingredients. One of the ingredients is artichokes, and the article includes a great recipe for a tagliatelle pasta with prawns and baby artichokes. The prawns look really tasty resting on the mound of pasta, with the [...]

I made this penne pasta dish the other night from leftover ingredients from other pasta sauces I had made. I had some asparagus and fava beans in the fridge which I of course didn’t want to go to waste, a piece of prosciutto and some Parmigiano and Pecorino cheeses, and canned San Marzano tomatoes, which [...]

Here is a lovely pasta dish, as colorful as it is delicious. The sauce is a blend of two strong, deep flavors – sweet roasted peppers and earthy roasted garlic. The bright red sauce contrasts brilliantly with the bright green tagliatelle – made with pureed spinach and watercress mixed into the eggs. Although there are [...]

Here is a bright, fresh pasta based on a spring combination: tender baby artichokes and freshly-shucked fava beans. It’s green, grassy, and slightly bitter, and anchovy cream adds salty and rich notes to the dish. A little drizzle of high-quality, fruity olive oil tossed in at the end really gives this pasta a lift. There [...]

Here is a spring pasta, with two great flavor combinations at work: asparagus and ramps, and asparagus and orange. It’s green, fresh, and has spring written all over. A little high-quality olive oil drizzled over top, along with maybe a bit of sea salt, would finish it off fine. Living in New York City, finding [...]

Baby artichokes were on my spring hit list this year – along with ramps, fava beans, and asparagus – and I think this ravioli is a great way to highlight them. The recipe had me trim and slice them and blanch them off, then saute them in olive oil with garlic and sun-dried tomatoes – [...]

It’s spring and asparagus is in season and delicious – that’s of course why a tortelloni recipe with a creamy sauce of pureed asparagus tips would catch my eye. The filling for the tortelloni is an Italian classic, spinach and ricotta with nutmeg and Parmigiano, which I’ve made before in ravioli and Roman dumplings. The [...]

I’ve been a big fan of Pappardelle, the ridiculously wide pasta ribbons, ever since I first had it at Trigo, a Mediterranean restaurant I worked at in Tribeca. We served it with a lobster and tomato confit sauce, garnished with half of a lobster claw. Pappardelle is a popular pasta among New York chefs and [...]

Spinach and Ricotta cheese, flavored with nutmeg and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, is a classic Italian mixture for filled pastas and gnocchi. It’s fresh, cheesy, and green, and also very quick and easy to prepare. For that reason I chose this one as my first ravioli to make at home, as I wanted to put my attention [...]

This is a deep, satisfying pasta from Bologna, Italy. Creamy and earthy, with a little lift from white wine in the sauce, and just a touch of heat. The recipe calls for dried porcinis. After soaking them in lukewarm water, strain the soaking liquid and save it for another use – it contains a lot [...]