Pasta

All winter i dream of the time when there are so many fresh herbs that it seems imperative to use them at almost every meal. One of my favorite ways to take advantage of this abundance is to mix large quantities of herbs with pasta and a simple base of olive oil and garlic. In winter, a dish like this would not only seem exotic but would also cost a small fortune. In summer, however, it is an inexpensive no-brainer.

There are pasta sauces you can make in the time it takes the pasta-cooking water to come to a boil, and there are those that are really fast—those that can be made in the eight to ten minutes it takes to actually cook the pasta. This is one of the latter, one that boasts just a couple of main ingredients and a supporting cast of two staples.

A quick way to add great flavor to many simple dinner dishes is already sitting in your pantry or cupboard: anchovies. Anchovies are among the original convenience foods and contribute an intense shot of complex brininess that is more like Parmigiano-Reggiano than like canned tuna. Use them, along with garlic, as the base for a bold tomato sauce or combine them, as I do here, with greens, garlic, oil, and chiles for a white sauce that packs a punch.

This dish which has zucchini as its focus—is simply amazing when made in midsummer with tender, crisp squash, but it isn’t half bad even when made in midwinter with a limp vegetable that’s traveled halfway around the world to get to your table. Either way, it is an unusual use for zucchini, which here substitutes for meat in a kind of vegetarian spaghetti carbonara, the rich pasta dish featuring eggs, bacon, and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Made with zucchini instead of bacon, the dish becomes a little less fat-laden, obviously, but it is still rich and delicious.

It is pasta’s nature to be simple. I’ve long made a vegetable sauce by poaching greens such as spinach in the pasta water, then removing them and adding the pasta, a neat trick. But my friend Jack Bishop, author of Vegetarian Italian Cooking, mentioned that he’d gone one step further, cooking the greens right in with the pasta and adding seasonings at the last minute. The method relies on the fact that there is a period of two or three minutes between the moment when the pasta’s last traces of chalkiness disappear and the point where it begins to become mushy. If, just before the pasta is done, you add the greens, whose tough stems have been removed, greens and pasta will finish cooking at the same time. When making this dish and others like it, you must adhere to the often ignored canon of allowing at least a gallon of water per pound of pasta, because you need a pot large enough to accommodate the greens and because they cannot be allowed to slow down the cooking too much

This dish is a minimalist’s take on the northern Italian autumn staple of tortelli filled with zucca, a pumpkinlike vegetable whose flesh, like that of butternut or acorn squash, is dense, orange, and somewhat sweet. The flavor and essential nature of that dish can be captured in a thirty-minute preparation that turns the classic inside out, using the squash as a sauce and sparing you the hours it would take to stuff the tortelli.

Since olive oil is the backbone of this dish, use the best you can lay your hands on and be sure to keep the heat under the oil medium-low, because you want to avoid browning the garlic at all costs. (Well, not at all costs. If you brown the garlic, you’ll have a different, more strongly flavored kind of dish, but one that is still worth eating.) Garnish with a good handful of chopped parsley. For thirty seconds’ work, this makes an almost unbelievable difference.

Couscous is a small pasta—not a grain as most people believe—as well as the name of almost every North African dish that contains it. So there are innumerable fish, vegetable, meat, and chicken couscous dishes (see pages 526 to 527 for a couple of others). You can cook the couscous separately (see page 526) or steam it on top of the simmering stew, a nice touch for which you will need either a special utensil called a couscoussière or a steamer rigged inside of a covered pot in which you cook the sauce. If you are not comfortable cooking pieces of whole fish, substitute a firm fillet like red snapper or grouper and reduce the fish cooking time to about 10 minutes; do not overcook.

It’s no secret that people eat leftover pasta, but this is a time-honored way to turn it into something else. It’s so good that you might find yourself cooking extra pasta just so you have an excuse to make this. As with any other frittata, you can add what you like here. It might be a bit of pancetta or bacon, but it can also be a bit of cooked vegetable or something as simple as minced scallion or parsley.

A dish I learned from my good friend Andrea, who is originally from Rome but has collected unusual pasta dishes from all over Italy. This is clearly a peasant dish, but the presence of sausage, butter, and cream makes it special enough for guests. Use well-seasoned “Italian” sausage; it can be hot if you like. That made without casing—in patties or bulk—will save you a step.

This is a dark pasta sauce served in much of Italy, made with stewed, shredded meat. I like to make it with duck legs, though you could use rabbit, pork—cut from the ribs or shoulder—or even the dark meat of a good chicken (hardest to find). The meat must first be braised in red wine or, even simpler, cooked in its own fat as I do here. That’s the only time-consuming part of the process, and it may be done a day or more in advance. (Refrigerate both meat and juices if you complete this step more than an hour or two before proceeding.) Sharp pecorino Romano is a better choice of cheese than Parmesan here, though chopped parsley also makes a good garnish.

A pasta dish kids love and one that became traditional with mine whenever we left them with a sitter for the evening. It’s best if the ham is prosciutto, the cream thick and fresh, and the peas just shelled, but it’s pretty good with supermarket ham and cream and frozen peas, and I’ve made it that way plenty of times. For variety, add about a cup of sliced button mushrooms to the ham mixture.

A deliciously strong pasta dish, taught to me (as were so many others) by my friend Andrea. See page 546 for information on guanciale. Frankly, I can barely write this recipe without rushing off to the stove.

One of those wonderful from-the-pantry pasta dishes that can be prepared in the time it takes to boil the water and cook the pasta. Canned tuna is not only acceptable but necessary; but the ideal tuna here would be that taken from the tuna’s belly, the fattiest part, and cured (preferably by your Sicilian grandmother) in great olive oil. Assuming you don’t have that, buy tuna packed in olive oil from Italy or Spain. (In a serious specialty store, you might find belly tuna—probably labeled ventresca—packed in olive oil. It’s dynamite.) What you’re looking for is dark, soft meat that will flake nicely and add its rich flavor to the sauce.

If you love octopus, this dish will satisfy your cravings. Just be sure to allow enough time for the octopus to become fully tender. (You can also use squid, which will cook much more quickly.) This dish employs the unusual but excellent technique of completing the cooking of the pasta in its sauce, something done throughout Italy.

Fresh porcini make the base of an incredible pasta sauce but cost at least twenty dollars a pound, if and when you can find them. Portobellos, which are cultivated, not wild, are sold at every supermarket every day at prices ranging from four to ten dollars a pound, and they’re consistent in quality. And if you cook them slowly in oil, adding a few reconstituted dried porcini as they cook—a technique popularized by Marcella Hazan—the results are wonderful. This mushroom topping is also great with nice, soft polenta (page 529).

I love filled pasta, but I rarely have the time or energy to make it. So, when I became enamored of pasta con zucca—a raviolilike affair stuffed with the Italian equivalent of pumpkin—I created this alternative, which is not quite as elegant but tastes just as good. If you cannot find a small pumpkin—the only kind whose flesh is dense enough for this dish—use butternut squash. Peel either with a paring knife; their skins are too tough for vegetable peelers.

There are several types of pasta sauce based on walnuts in northern Italy, including the one on page 550; this is among my favorites. It also happens to be the easiest. If you like, you could throw in a tablespoon of capers, too.

This is a simple preparation that can serve as a side dish or main course (add some cooked sausage if you like) and can be made with any dark green, from spinach to collards to turnip or mustard greens. It needs no cheese.

Cabbage, when it begins to break down, becomes quite creamy, and that’s what makes this dish somewhat unusual. This will be stronger tasting if you use plenty of black and red pepper, olive oil, and pecorino or quite mild if you start with butter, reducing the black pepper, eliminating the red, and finishing with pecorino. You can also make it far more substantial; see the variation.