Bucatini

When I’m in the mood for tomato sauce, Amatriciana is my go-to. It’s all about onions, spicy tomatoes, and pork products. Guanciale—cured pork jowl—is the key here. It has a sweeter, more interesting flavor than bacon. In a pinch, pancetta can be substituted, and in a double pinch bacon will suffice (though it does add a smokier flavor, so be warned). What else can I say? This sauce makes me want to dive into the bowl head first with my mouth wide open!

Bucatini looks like fat spaghetti that’s hollow in the middle, like drinking straws made of pasta.

Pasta stewed up in red wine is a Tuscan invention: my kinda people! I toss it together with other usual suspects from the region: wild mushrooms, rosemary, and dark greens.

Cacio pepe literally translates as “cheese and pepper.” It is a classic Italian pasta dish that centers on the flavors of grated cheese and freshly ground black pepper. The simplest versions we have seen are made with abundant cheese and pepper, melted and moistened only with the cooking water. More indulgent recipes add olive oil or butter as we do below. Most recipes call for Pecorino Romano, a hard sheep’s-milk cheese, although Parmigiano Romano also crops up here and there. In our version the roasted pasta adds a deeper, more savory flavor to the finished dish. It is simple to make but it’s important to get the balance right so that your pasta is silky and flavorful. It’s the perfect meal for when the pantry is almost bare but the body needs something delicious to satisfy it.

This recipe makes a wonderful tomato-and-sausage sauce for pasta. Typical of Basilicata, it is uncomplicated yet yields a complex and delicious flavor. It is important to use the best sausage, preferably a mix freshly made by a real Italian butcher. If there’s one available to you, ask for sweet, all-pork sausage, preferably a medium grind of meat with some texture, rather than a fine grind, which tends to be pasty. To save work, since you want the meat to be loose, ask for the sausage mix before it is put in the casing. As for the pasta, I recommend bucatini, which is what I first had in Basilicata. But I like spaghetti with this, too—a whole-wheat spaghetti would be especially nice.

This classic and delectable pasta dish originated in the region of Abruzzi, in the little town of Amatrice, northeast of Rome, where it was traditionally prepared without tomatoes. But it is the Roman version of pasta all’amatriciana, with tomatoes, that I share with you here—the version that is best known and deservedly popular. Lots of onions; chips of guanciale (cured pork cheek, now available in the United States, see Sources, page 340), pancetta, or bacon; and San Marzano tomatoes are the essential elements of the sauce, Roma style. Note that the onions are first softened in water, before olive oil is added to the pan—a traditional but unusual step that is said to make the onions sweeter. The standard pasta used is bucatini or perciatelli (spaghetti are only tolerated). The long, dry strands of perciatelli resemble very thick spaghetti but are hollow like a drinking straw. When cooked, they are wild and wiggly, so you might be tempted to cut them. Do not—once you’ve got them on your fork, they’re delicious and fun to eat. It is quite all right to slurp them. Indeed, as kids we would suck them in so fast that the end of the noodle would whip us in the nose, splattering sauce all over our faces. What a wonderful memory!

Bucatini is a long, hollow pasta, like very thick spaghetti with a hole running through it. Because it is so hearty, its sauce needs rich ingredients to stand up to it. The basil, sun-dried tomatoes, and black olive tapenade form a flavor-packed, thick sauce that begs to coat the thick, toothsome strands of bucatini. With only five ingredients in this entire recipe, you won't be surprised at how effortless and speedy it is. Cooking the pasta is the only thing that takes any time.

Even if anchovies aren't part of your culinary heritage, the way the sweetness of the onions and the saltiness of the fish interact, combined with the tactile pleasure of the crunchy bread crumbs, will have you missing your nonna no matter what your nationality.

Thanks to Simon and Garfunkel, the fresh herbs in this dish are forever linked. But the folk duo probably never knew how good they are on top of al dente bucatini, a thicker-than-spaghetti hollow noodle.

Maccheroni e Melanzane This is a pasta dish that is served in Sicilian homes and home-style restaurants, rather than upscale places. The recipe calls for perciatelli or bucatini, which is what Italians consider maccheroni.

Bucatini al Fuoco, from Basilicata The ingenuity of Basilicata's kitchen is embodied in this simple pasta: three ingredients, easy to come by and inexpensive, are combined to make a formidably tasty sauce. The method of pounding garlic and chili peppers into a paste, then cooking the paste in olive oil, is common to Basilicata and Calabria and elevates the ordinary aglio, olio e peperoncino of central and southern Italy to new heights of piquancy.