Italian American

I really love grilled chicken salad as a go-to, no-brainer supper solution, but the Chicken Caesar is so over for me—I need a few years off! So here’s another fresh chicken salad idea; eat your heart out, Caesar!

When I made my annual Christmas Pasta for the holiday this year we discovered that both my mom and I had shopped for the ingredients, so we had lots of leftover hot and sweet sausage and ground beef in the fridge. The next day, this recipe was born.

I make this one when I watch GoodFellas. Shave the garlic nice and thin, like Paulie would, but don’t use a razor blade like he does in the movie. A sharp knife is fine.

Italian-style Sloppy Joes—get it? Hah! I kill me! Funny! Well, I thought so, anyway . . .

French bread pizza from Stouffer’s was my favorite frozen food as a kid. Now that I’m all grown up I make my own, because I can overstuff them. (My appetite grew, too.)

If you like those spinach and artichoke dips you get on the appetizer menu in restaurants, you’re gonna LOVE this!

Anchovies work magic here. Once they melt they will not taste fishy; they’ll taste more like salted nuts, really. Plus, anchovies in any seafood sauce I serve are the secret ingredient that makes the eaters go “Hmm, what is that?” (Don’t tell anyone my secret, k?)

This Roman dish is as old as the city’s seven hills. It doesn’t get any easier, really. As a side, I fry up some garlic in oil and toss it with chopped defrosted spinach and some rinsed canned white beans.

Take a pizza Margerita, make it on a tortilla, then fold it like a quesadilla and you get a pizza-dilla!

This meal is a combo of two favorite preparations: francese and piccata. Francese are egg-battered cutlets or fillets, and piccata are simply flour-dredged or plain cutlets or fillets sautéed with lemon and wine. I was never good at making decisions, especially regarding dinner, so I made up this two-for-one dinner. Serve with wilted fresh spinach or green salad.

Serve with tomato salad.

Polpette are baby meatballs and these are stuffed with a pine nut (buttery, slightly crunchy surprise) and a currant or raisin (to keep the meat moist).

A pretty basic version to get you started.

This is a mix-up of pasta e fagioli and minestra. Again, my indecisiveness is at play.

This dish can be made 100 ways. It’s one of the first dishes you eat as an Italian kid: macaroni with butter and ricotta cheese. Once you grow up, you add stuff in, but the base remains the same. I’ll try to limit myself and just give you my top five versions.

This dish is one buttery, delicious, edible ode to spring. (Also, the flavor is so sexy, it could bring on some serious birds-and-bees action!)