Pasta

In the last few years, the whole-grain pasta offerings on supermarket shelves have expanded with gusto. Where there used to be one or two, there were now up to a dozen. There’s everything from mass-market brands touting health claims (High fiber! Good source of omega-3’s and antioxidants! Extra protein!), to artisanal pastas made from ancient strains of wheat like farro and spelt in tastefully rustic packaging, selling for upward of $10 a pound.

I’ve been making this pasta for a very long time, probably since the 1980s, since it’s derived from a Marcella Hazan recipe. It’s dead simple — one of the things that I love about it — and you can pre-cook the cauliflower a day ahead or so if you’d like. I usually do the whole thing at once: cook the cauliflower in water, scoop it out and then, later, cook the pasta in the same water. It’s already boiling, and you want the taste of the cauliflower anyway, so why not?

I first had Swiss chard pesto two years ago while volunteering on an organic farm in Italy. It was a revelation. Pesto, usually made with basil, is also fantastic with any leafy greens — radish greens, turnip tops, kale. Swiss chard is the easiest to work with because of its enormous, easy-to-tear leaves. For vegans, omit the cheese in the pesto, as I do here. Then boil a pot of pasta and grate a good bit of Parmesan onto the servings for people who want it. Use fresh whole-wheat spaghetti or a dried shape with a little curve, such as fusilli.

Tangy feta cheese creates a melted blanket of flavor over shrimp in tomato sauce and orzo (rice-shaped pasta). It makes a hearty supper.

Begin the pasta with a quick homemade tomato sauce, much more satisfying than sauce from a jar, and a lot cleaner and fresher. Buy whole tomatoes and crush them yourself (instead of using canned crushed tomatoes, which are dense and heavy). Simmer them with fresh fennel for 10 minutes, then add olives and shrimp for a second-day dish as elegant as the first.

Sun-dried tomatoes are often parched and leathery or overmarinated and overpowering. The Goal here is meaty, sweet, chewy, and bright-tasting tomatoes, partnered with pasta and other, assertive ingredients that can stand up to the tomatoes' strong flavor. The Solution is first drain and rinse the tomatoes to rid them of their universally unpleasant marinades, then cut them into small pieces to tame their presence.

When you buy raw shrimp in their shells, you can also make a flavorful broth — a taste of the sea that’s better than bottled clam juice. Simply simmer the shells in water for 10 minutes, strain them, and you have the basis for a beautiful sauce or stew. While the shells cook for this pasta sauce, saute shrimp, then sugar snaps, and finish by stirring a little creme fraiche into the mixture, which gives it a richer taste. Put on a pot of spaghetti and in the time it takes to cook it, your work is done.

Layers of homemade mixed herb pesto lend a fresh brightness to this vegetarian main.

The test kitchen prefers baked ziti made with heavy cream, but whole milk can be substituted by increasing the amount of cornstarch to 2 teaspoons and increasing the cooking time in step 3 by 1 to 2 minutes. Our preferred brand of mozzarella is Dragone Whole Milk Mozzarella. Part-skim mozzarella can also be used, but avoid pre-shredded cheese, as it does not melt well.

The Original: Any old canned tuna mixed with cream of something (chicken, celery, mushroom) soup. Our Version: Oil-packed albacore in a roux-thickened sauce flavored with leeks, dill, and Gruyère. Our one old-school concession? A crunchy, crushed-potato-chip topping.