142 Italian recipes. Page 5 of 6. Compare ingredients and cooking times. Gochujang Eggplant Ricotta Lasagna Rolls, Gochujang Vongole Linguine.
Each lasagna sheet is spread with filling and rolled up rather than stacked, and the rolls come out of the oven as neat single portions. The eggplant is roasted first to drive off moisture that would otherwise thin the ricotta, then split between the filling and the top, while a tomato sauce seasoned with gochujang gives the mild cheese some heat.
Clams open in white wine, and the briny liquid they release becomes the sauce base for a spoonful of gochujang, the Korean fermented chili paste. The result tastes like vongole with an extra layer of savory heat rather than a red chili sauce. A small knob of butter at the end rounds off the spice and gives the sauce its gloss. Because that clam liquor goes straight into the sauce, the clams soak for 30 minutes first to purge any sand.
Pear slices warmed in butter meet sharp, salty Gorgonzola melted into cream, with sweet and salty trading places from bite to bite. The pear gets just 1 minute over medium-low heat, enough to turn its edges slightly translucent while the center stays crisp. Boiling would split the cheese sauce, so the Gorgonzola melts slowly over low heat. Walnuts toasted in a dry pan add crunch against soft potato gnocchi, and a little lemon juice and black pepper cut the weight of the blue cheese. The gnocchi come out as soon as they float, before they turn soft, and start to finish the dish takes about 15 minutes.
Onion, carrot, celery and zucchini are all cut to about 1 cm so a single spoonful catches vegetables, kidney beans and small pasta together. Size matters more than it looks: an oversized carrot stays firm while smaller zucchini pieces collapse in the same simmer.
Rice-shaped orzo, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, parsley and mint come together in a cold lemon and olive oil salad that holds up well when made ahead for lunch. Orzo keeps softening as it soaks up the dressing, so it comes out of the water 1 minute early to stay pleasantly firm. Feta is crumbled in large pieces by hand, leaving salty pockets rather than an even coating.
Mala sauce, the numbing, chili-hot seasoning of Sichuan cooking, gets wrapped in cream, milk and Parmigiano, so the tingle stays but the burn is gentler. Chicken thigh is browned hard before the mala sauce is stirred in, so the meat picks up the spice before the cream does. Mala sauces differ a lot in saltiness from brand to brand, so the recipe starts with 1 tablespoon and leaves final seasoning until the cream is in. Pasta water, added a little at a time, keeps the cream sauce from splitting, and when it is right the sauce no longer pools in the pan but sits in the spirals of the fusilli.
Most of the flavor comes from spreading the ground beef across a hot pan and letting the moisture cook off until brown bits form. Left in a heap, the meat steams pale instead. Tomato paste worked in between the meat without lumps, then a low simmer, gives a thick sauce that clings to the beef rather than pooling under the spaghetti. As it thickens it catches on the bottom easily and needs an occasional stir. There is no wine or milk, just beef, tomato, onion and garlic, finished with Parmesan and a few basil leaves.
Japanese-style cream pasta uses mentaiko, salted pollock roe, in two ways: two thirds melts into the butter and cream sauce, and the rest goes on top raw with crumbled roasted seaweed. A teaspoon of lemon juice at the end lightens the cream. The roe is stirred in with the burner off or barely on. Over strong heat it turns fishy.
Any vegetables left in the fridge can go into this soup, as long as the order holds: firm ones like carrot and celery soften in oil first, quick-cooking zucchini and beans come later. Ditalini cook directly in the pot, and their starch thickens the broth; if it turns too heavy, hot vegetable stock loosens it without cooling the soup down. Fresh basil and a drizzle of olive oil are added after the heat is off.
Mushrooms brown over high heat, while the truffle oil is added only after the burner is off, at the very last stir. Each aroma is handled at its own temperature because heat flattens truffle oil. Well-drained gnocchi matter too: water clinging to them thins the cream sauce.
The orecchiette boil in the same water the broccoli rabe was blanched in, so the little ear-shaped pasta picks up the greens' bitterness too. If that is too much, blanch the rabe a bit longer.
Wild boar shoulder spends a night in red wine with juniper berries and rosemary, then cooks down slowly into a ragù for wide ribbons of pappardelle. The juniper's piney edge suits the dark, gamey meat. Use boar sold for eating, and cook it through to the center of the thickest pieces.
Finely grated yellow zest melts into warm butter and carries the lemon scent through the whole sauce. The grater stays shallow, since the white pith underneath adds bitterness. The small amount of cream is only warmed until bubbles show at the edge, because a hard boil splits it. Starchy pasta water, added a little at a time with the Parmesan, emulsifies everything into a sauce that coats the linguine smoothly, and the plates go out before it tightens. With little more than lemon, butter, cream and Parmesan, this southern Italian pasta comes together in about 20 minutes, an easy weeknight dinner.
Despite the name, this Neapolitan ragu has nothing to do with Genoese basil pesto, and it contains no tomato. One story credits cooks or merchants from Genoa for the name. A large amount of onion cooks down with beef chuck for at least 90 minutes until it nearly dissolves into the sauce, with white wine adding acidity. Even on low heat the onion likes to catch on the bottom of the pot and needs a stir now and then. The beef is then pulled into strands, and ziti hold the thick, sweet onion sauce well under a generous grating of Parmigiano.
Guanciale started in a cold pan and rendered slowly for about 8 minutes gives off the fat that becomes the base of the sauce. Shaking that fat together with starchy pasta water before the cheese goes in is what lets the pecorino melt into a glossy coating instead of clumping. With no tomato or egg, the dish is just cured pork cheek, sheep's cheese, black pepper and pasta.
Eggplant salted for 10 minutes and pressed dry browns in the pan instead of steaming, keeping a firm center under a golden surface. The dish comes from Catania in Sicily, where the browned eggplant flavors a simple tomato sauce that clings to the spaghetti.
Some of the crisped guanciale is held back from the tomato sauce and scattered over the bucatini with pecorino at the end, so the plate has two textures: pork softened in the sauce and crunchy pieces on top. The clear fat it renders over medium-low heat is what the tomatoes cook in. Cutting the guanciale into thick batons keeps it from drying out.
Beef and pork are browned until a dark crust forms on the pan, then red wine lifts that crust into the sauce; most of the depth in this Bologna-style ragu starts there. With tomatoes and milk added, the pot simmers uncovered for at least an hour until meat and vegetables melt into one sauce.
The broth turns thick enough to coat a spoon without any cream, thanks to mashed chickpeas and the starch from ditalini cooked right in the pot. Whole chickpeas and the small pasta keep some bite, while rosemary and tomato paste give it a warm, savory base. It sits somewhere between soup and pasta, and is eaten with a spoon.
Mashed beans and pasta starch do the thickening that cream would do elsewhere. About a third of the cannellini get crushed with a fork and stirred back, turning the broth cloudy and smooth, and the ditalini then cooks in the same pot, releasing more starch as it swells. The aroma comes from garlic and a sprig of fresh rosemary; the crushed tomatoes are poured in before the garlic browns, and scraping the pot then lifts the cooked-on bits into the soup. Because the pasta keeps drinking broth, the soup tightens quickly; small splashes of water bring it back to something you eat with a spoon rather than a fork.
Broccoli, zucchini, bell pepper, and peas each keep their own bite in this light spaghetti, which uses no cream at all. A splash of pasta water turns the olive oil into a thin glossy coating, leaving the vegetables to carry most of the flavor. The broccoli needs a head start and the peas go in last; the pan comes off the heat once the colors brighten and only the edges soften, before anything turns limp. Whatever vegetables are at their freshest work in the same way.
Four anchovy fillets melt into the garlic oil over medium-low heat until nothing fish-shaped is left, only a savory base under the tomatoes. Halved black olives and capers follow, and between them and the anchovies the sauce rarely needs added salt. The risk lies in reduction: when the sauce thickens too fast its saltiness turns sharp, and lowering the heat then does more good than simmering longer.
Two tablespoons of vodka bubble for about a minute, long enough to soften the harsh alcohol smell but not so long that the aroma disappears. The tomato puree reduces until its color deepens before any cream goes in, and from that point the pan stays at its lowest heat so the sauce never boils and splits. The finished sauce should slip into the hollow centers of the penne as well as cling to the outside.
The pesto never touches a hot pan. Spaghetti goes from the pot into a large bowl and the sauce is tossed through it there, away from the stove, keeping the basil's raw aroma and bright green color. The processor is the other source of heat, and short pulses with the sides scraped down keep long runs from warming the inside and dulling the basil. Pine nuts are toasted dry only to a light gold, and the olive oil goes into the processor in two or three additions, stopping when the pesto is thick yet still drops slowly from a spoon.