Parmesan

This dish turns the satisfying Italian American sandwich filling–sausage and peppers–into a hearty pasta dish.

Toasted walnuts and tender green beans add a delicious flavor to sweet bell pepper & roasted chicken ravioli.

Three Cheese Asparagus Ravioli flavored with lemon, garlic and basil make a delicious meal to enjoy any night of the week. This one comes together in about 15 minutes so "too busy" is not an excuse.

This meal has everything you need in one dish. Chicken & roasted garlic tortelloni pair up with pancetta and broccoli rabe for a tasty dish worthy of entertaining.

Ravioli tossed with asparagus, Parmesan cheese, pine nuts and pancetta creates a delicious meal. The lemon juice and olive oil drizzle provide a light, fresh taste.

Roasting corn brings out the natural sweetness and combining with ravioli, garlic and basil creates a delicious meal your whole family will love.

Sweet bell pepper & roasted chicken ravioli is complemented nicely with a sauce made with yellow tomatoes, garlic, Parmesan cheese and basil. An upscale taste that is still quick and easy.

Eggplant and tomatoes are delicious roasted and blended into a chunky sauce with garlic, crushed red pepper and mint. The sauce complements the chicken & roasted garlic tortelloni nicely and makes for a wonderful dish for entertaining.

Brown butter is easy to make and delicious over vegetables, fish and pasta. It's perfect tossed with asparagus and three cheese asparagus ravioli in this recipe.

No disrespect to the frozen tots these are based on, but making your own is way more fun than opening a bag (and they taste better, too).

Mary Fitzgerald, Wexford: Gardener and internet enthusiast Three generations of my family have eaten this dish: we used to make it to use up my father's seasonal harvest of spinach. I now grow spinach in my own garden, along with everything from sorrel and runner-beans to beetroot and rhubarb, and make this pie regularly.

Spinach and lowfat ricotta make it hearty—and good for you.

Cooking the potatoes on a wire rack lets hot air circulate around them, so they get extra crisp.

This is one of those serendipitous, stumbled-upon creations. I had made a big pot of polenta, and I poured the leftovers into a baking dish in a thin layer. The next day, foraging in the fridge for lunch, I came upon the polenta, a little fresh mozzarella, a little Parmesan (or was it Pecorino?). To make a pizza of sorts, I layered on the cheeses, added a splash of oil, crumbled over a handful of dried sage leaves, and put it into a hot oven. The result was completely satisfying. So what if it's not truly a pizza?—though perhaps it has a culinary ancestor somewhere, since there's really nothing new under the sun.

As with biscotti there is an undeniable American-Italian influence at play here but, once again, I embrace this. Actually, though, American-Italian food has had its own influence on the cooking of the Old Country: these days, I am reliably informed by my Italian publisher and celebrated food writer, Csaba dalla Zorza, you can find dried cranberries with relative ease in Italy. The true Italian Christmas dinner is very much about the capon. Yes, you can find capons outside of Italy, although not everyone can quite cope with the idea of eating a castrated cockerel. Many understandably view old-school caponization with distaste, although it is considered ethically acceptable if the rooster has been chemically rather than surgically castrated. I don't know about you, but the idea of eating meat that has been flooded with the types of hormones necessarily involved here gives me the willies. Besides, my Christmas Dinner is my Christmas Dinner: unchanging, ritualistic, an intrinsic part of me. When in Rome, and all that, but if I'm cooking at home, I don't fiddle with my time-honored menu. I'm not going to give an evangelical tub-thump about my turkey brining techniques, as I've done enough of that in the past, but I am still open to other ways of celebrating the Big Bird and this recipe is a case in point. For me, it is perfect for any sort of seasonal supper party, but really comes into its own on a buffet table, as it carves fantastically and is as good (maybe even better) cold than hot, so you can make it in advance and then be the world's most unharried host on the night. You need to go to a butcher to get a while breast joint and you need to ask for it to be butterflied and boned and make sure the skin is left on. I know it might sound a bit of a faff, but take it from me that stuffing a while double breast joint is very much easier than stuffing and rolling a single breast joint, as is more commonly found in supermarkets. Basically, all you're doing here is opening out your boneless turkey joint, smothering it with stuffing, and folding it over. What you end up with, for all the ease of its creation, is nothing short of a showstopper.

The key to gratins is having all the ingredients—whether they're basic potatoes or the mixed root vegetables below—sliced the same thickness so they cook at the same rate. Make friends with a mandoline: It quickly yields precise, even slices.

This breakfast is wonderfully versatile and allows you to use up any leftover grains you have from previous meals, folding in leafy greens for a bit of color. In that sense, think of it more as a template rather than a hard-and-fast approach.

The ultimate holiday vacation cooking project: lasagna with two homemade sauces and layers of homemade pasta.

Without the hassle of breading and frying, eggplant Parmesan goes from special-occasion project to easy weeknight dinner.