Category Archives: Pasta

This dish is admittedly a splurge which I allow myself once or twice in the summertime.  Although lobsters are available yearound, it only feels right to enjoy this dish outdoors in the summer.  It’s an impressive and festive dish and, … Continue reading →

A couple of times every spring, I’ll go through the trouble of making fresh peas.  When the peas are plump and fresh, they are sweet enough to eat raw (my mother enjoys them raw more than cooked).  The labor of … Continue reading →

This pesto has a wonderful smokiness and intense green color, and it doesn’t blacken easily.  There’s only a touch of basil, but lots of baby spinach.  The predominance of spinach makes for a milder, more subtle green flavor than pesto made entirely with … Continue reading →

This dish begins with a tomato sauce containing eggplant and onion, which has simmered for 2 hours.  The eggplant melts and infuses the sauce with a sweet, silky but very earthy flavor that’s difficult to place as eggplant.   This sauce … Continue reading →

This dish is a lesson in brilliant frugality taught to me by my mother.  One afternoon many years ago, I had come home from a farm stand and my mother was visiting.  I had bought a huge bundle of spinach, … Continue reading →

I’ve posted other versions of pasta with kale for you but this version is slightly different.  I’m using Luganiga sausage instead of regular pork sausage.  It’s sweeter and more delicate than regular Italian sausage.  Because of its sweetness I used … Continue reading →

This is a dish we used to serve at Po sometimes.  The hallmark of Mario’s cooking is big assertive flavor, and chorizo definitely fits that bill.  Chorizo is a cured Spanish sausage made with pork and lots of fragrant deep red Spanish paprika.  … Continue reading →

Generally, the fewer the ingredients in a dish, the more crucial the quality of those ingredients.  When asparagus is picked the same day it’s cooked, it’s a totally different vegetable than the asparagus most of us are accustomed to eating … Continue reading →

This is a similar set of ingredients to an earlier post of mine (“pasta with spinach, ricotta and mint”) but with some key differences.  This is a butter-based sauce used to dress  fresh egg pasta, with spinach chopped finely and … Continue reading →