Penne

This pasta might sound unsubstantial, but I promise you won’t leave the table wishing you’d made a roast instead. The caramelized cauliflower, rich cavolo nero, and chewy pasta, sautéed with rosemary, chile, garlic, anchovy, and onion, meld together into a filling, savory whole. Although sautéing the pasta isn’t traditional, I love the integration of flavors and the slightly crisped noodles.

The time for this recipe may stretch to forty minutes or so, due to preheating the oven and roasting the vegetables, but it’s one of my favorites, and I think it’s worth that tiny bit of extra time. I hope you will, too.

Mama Colaruotolo traces this dish back to her ancestral home in Italy. While it originally called for Italian white wine, she substitutes her family’s Finger Lakes Chardonnay to create a New World masterpiece. The Finger Lakes wine adds distinctive fruitiness to the dish, even better the next day, allowing the flavors to integrate even more.

Think of this hearty casserole of ground lamb in tomato sauce, penne pasta, and a béchamel-and-cheese sauce as the ultimate Greek comfort food.

Begin cooking the shrimp and sauce while the pot of water is coming to a boil so everything is ready at the same time. Be careful not to overcook the shrimp, as they can easily become tough.

Two types of peas are cooked along with the pasta in this one-pot dish, so everything finishes at once. The vegetables should be cooked just long enough that their colors stay vibrant and they are warmed through.

Legend has it that this dish was first created in Sicily as a tribute to the famous opera by Vincenzo Bellini, a native composer. This version stays true to the traditional recipe, combining eggplant, tomatoes, and basil.

THIS IS A TRULY DECADENT DISH, but you won’t want to save it for special occasions. Adding another Pacific Northwest flavor to our classic mac and cheese was easy; the base is a cheese sauce made from flavorful crab stock, and cauliflower balances the sweet crab flavor.

THIS IS THE SAME GREAT BEECHER’S MAC AND CHEESE recipe taken to a new level, with the spice of chiles and the addition of vegetables. Feel free to experiment with leftover cheeses for new flavor combinations.

VELVETY EGGPLANT, that beloved summer vegetable, comes to life in this easy pasta sauce. If you’re short on time, you can make the sauce ahead; it tastes even better the next day. For a more substantial dish, serve it with your favorite Italian-style chicken sausage. A short, sturdy pasta like rigatoni, rotini, or penne is the best choice for this chunky sauce.

WHILE FRESH MOZZARELLA IS USED IN AN ENDLESS VARIETY of pastas, pizzas, and salads, smoked mozzarella adds more flavor. It is made by smoking cheese over wood to produce a smoky, creamy result. This easy pasta salad makes a standout lunch dish, with the mayonnaise lending extra creaminess. You can adjust the amount of dressing according to taste.

SMART SUBSTITUTION Try a mix of yogurt and lemon juice for a tart, creamy pasta sauce without a lot of fat. This satisfying pasta salad, made with whole-wheat penne, makes a great summer supper; pack any leftovers for a workday lunch.

WHY IT’S LIGHT A springtime pasta dish forgoes heavy sauce in favor of a toss-together topping of arugula, lemon zest and juice, and extra-virgin olive oil. A generous amount of Pecorino Romano cheese ensures the dish satisfies both appetite and palate.

I love the flavors of spicy garlicky sausage together with nutty greens such as broccoli rabe. Besides fusilli noodles, penne rigate, orecchiette, or any other large toothy pasta shape is good for this sauce.

Why not cook pasta as you do risotto? That is, add broth a bit at a time and stir frequently, with the goal being a creamy, quickly made pasta (no waiting for the requisite gallon of water to boil!) that requires only marginally more attention than the standard variety. The concept is simple, it makes sense—pasta, like Arborio and other rices used for risotto, is plenty starchy enough—and it takes just the use of good-quality stock and a vegetable to make the dish delicious. If you’re using canned stock and have a little time, heat it with an onion, a carrot, and a garlic clove before beginning to add it to the pasta. And don’t salt the dish until you’re finished cooking; canned stock can be overly salty.

The fundamental procedures required to make this pasta dish are easy, but this is as instructional as any simple recipe I know, and one that builds a wonderfully flavorful dish with just a few ingredients.

This dish is a minimalist’s take on the northern Italian autumn staple of tortelli filled with zucca, a pumpkinlike vegetable whose flesh, like that of butternut or acorn squash, is dense, orange, and somewhat sweet. The flavor and essential nature of that dish can be captured in a thirty-minute preparation that turns the classic inside out, using the squash as a sauce and sparing you the hours it would take to stuff the tortelli.

Fresh porcini make the base of an incredible pasta sauce but cost at least twenty dollars a pound, if and when you can find them. Portobellos, which are cultivated, not wild, are sold at every supermarket every day at prices ranging from four to ten dollars a pound, and they’re consistent in quality. And if you cook them slowly in oil, adding a few reconstituted dried porcini as they cook—a technique popularized by Marcella Hazan—the results are wonderful. This mushroom topping is also great with nice, soft polenta (page 529).

I love filled pasta, but I rarely have the time or energy to make it. So, when I became enamored of pasta con zucca—a raviolilike affair stuffed with the Italian equivalent of pumpkin—I created this alternative, which is not quite as elegant but tastes just as good. If you cannot find a small pumpkin—the only kind whose flesh is dense enough for this dish—use butternut squash. Peel either with a paring knife; their skins are too tough for vegetable peelers.

The sweet, familiar combination of pine nuts and currants offsets the mild anise bitterness of fresh fennel here. Omit the pasta from this Sicilian sauce and you’ll have a good vegetable dish. If you can find the herb fennel (those living in southern California can find it wild, and many gardeners use it as an ornamental), use a few of the feathery parts of its stalks in place of the tops of the bulb. If you cannot, add the fennel seeds for stronger flavor.

A fast, classic pasta sauce popular not only in Rome but throughout central and southern Italy. Arrabbiata means “angry,” and this sauce should be not only spicy but also strong, with the taste of garlic that has been browned, not just colored—as well as a good dose of chile.

If there is one dish that I can affirm is Italian American, this is it. It has all the pedigree of being Italian, though it was definitely born in America. This is one of those few recipes that crossed the Atlantic in the other direction, and the Italians in Italy have been enjoying it as well. The first references we find to vodka sauce are from the early 1980s.

Whole-wheat pasta, which contains more fiber and is slightly chewier and nuttier tasting than regular pasta, adds nutritional value to this dish.

This pasta dish is pretty spectacular. It’s just a few ingredients that combine to make something fabulous—and that, in a nutshell, is the secret of Italian cooking. The roasted tomatoes and roasted garlic are rich and delicious, the beans add protein and texture, and the basil brings a fresh flavor.