Category Archives: Pasta

This is a recipe we have taught in our home cooking class and is delicious. This dish was named after Vincenzo Bellini’s opera, Norma. It is a typical Sicilian pasta recipe, flavorful, fresh, and even vegetarian. It is exceptional with fresh farmer’s market produce.

The beauty of pesto is that it is easily freezable which makes it available at anytime. But to me, it is the quintessential spring dish. We tend to eat it in the traditional manner, just the pasta with a few boiled green beans and sliced potatoes; however, it is great as a primo, first dish, during an Easter Feast.

Lasagne makers are often judged on how many layers than can create. Five or six layers are considered the minimum for acceptability. Ooh’s and ahh’s occur the higher they go. For my birthday celebration, Giuliano created a spectacular 9-layer lasagne!

In classic Bolognese, the sauce and the pasta are in symbiosis and enhance each other. This is one of those sauces that is best with homemade egg pasta, and is a delicacy that, in my family, we could eat weekly.

In the Italian region where our family is from, Emilia Romagnia, a traditional New Year’s dish is Tortellini or Cappelletti: small filled pasta that is shaped, according to some, like a Bishops hat. Cappelletti means little hats, and New Year’s, Capo di Anno, is the hat or head of the year so it is an obvious pairing. They are at their best in a homemade meat broth but they are also delicious served with a cream sauce. However you choose to enjoy them, they are a delicacy to look forward to all year long.

Making pasta dough by hand is simple. Do not be discouraged by the length of my instructions. I have tried to describe as clearly as possible the method. With a little practice it will easily become second nature and you will have finished dough in less than 15 minutes.

One of our favorite methods is to make a pasta sauce with radicchio. When it is cooked, radicchio provides a rich deep flavor to a pasta sauce, and loses some of its bitter flavor.

  When asked about her favorite food, our six-year-old daughter, Michela, invariably names broccoli. The broccoli she’s so fond of is the Romanesco variety. Although it’s fairly new to suburban […]

In Italy pumpkin would be used for this sauce, but I’ve found that butternut squash more closely resembles the flavor of Italian pumpkin than American pumpkin does. This sauce has been a hit with kids. I made this one day when my daughters had playmates over, and the five-to-nine year old crowd unanimously approved it!

I often make a risotto with red and yellow peppers, tomatoes, and basil whose enticing colors and aroma make it one of my family’s favorites. The fresh and fragrant combination of flavors makes this dish a great light summer meal.