Amherst cooking teacher and author Betty Rosbottom tosses pasta with a spicy tomato sauce, plain havarti and Parmesan cheeses, and tops the dish with slivered black olives. The dish appeared in one of her books, "American Favorites," and was on the cover of Bon Appetit magazine.
The twisted pasta called strozzapreti ("priest stranglers") particularly suits this simple ricotta, fontina, and egg mixture, which catches in the curves of each loop. The dish is layered with mozzarella and topped with crumbs, which brown during baking. The end result is lighter than most mac and cheeses.
Almost everything here - except tamarind pulp and dried shrimp - comes from the supermarket. Do all the chopping and assemble the ingredients on a tray. You'll also need a deep wok or skillet.
Even right off their prolific vines, summer squash can be watery and sometimes bitter. Cook them slowly in plenty of olive oil and they turn sweet but stay moist and summery, so you can take advantage of the beautiful golden color. As you cook the sliced squash, mash the rounds against the sides of the skillet to break them up. Then toss the squash with rigatoni, leaves of fresh basil, and crumbled goat cheese. The bright yellow pieces of squash coat the tubular pasta and the mixture tastes as creamy as if you had added a white sauce.
I threw this recipe together last night as a way to use up eggplant from my garden. My bf and I loved it. I served some bruschetta with it and it complimented the pasta very well.
Why broccoli rabe was not a part of the American vegetable culture until relatively recently is completely beyond me. What can you not cook it with? It is near-perfect as a side dish, especially with oil, lemon an garlic; as a bed for any meat or fish; on pizza; tossed with sausages; as the basis of a frittata. And, of course, with pasta, which showcases it as well as anything.
This dish is about as close to fusion, to “made-up,” as I will allow. It’s not traditional, it’s not regional. Though it has an Asian flavor, it’s not even that. What it is: a tasty, fast, cheap, infinitely variable broth-and-noodle combination. Its preparation is slowed down only by waiting for the water to boil.
Diane Hyman, co-owner of The Trolley Stop, created this recipe with family friend Dotty Baker. Hyman adds seasoned salt and onion salt to her dish.
Fast food doesn't have to mean bad food. This quick pasta dish combines a can of chickpeas, sometimes called ceci beans, with tiny pasta to create a hearty and satisfying meal. It's one of many regional variations of the Italian comfort food pasta e fagioli (known as pasta fazool). This particular recipe traveled from the Basilicata region of Italy to America with my maternal grandfather, George Fanelli. My grandmother, an Irish woman with the moniker Nelly Kelly Fanelli, mastered the dish that my mother, thankfully, recorded for posterity.