Pasta

The lemon and dill vinaigrette is a wonderful complement to the flavors of this salad.

For a taste of Italy in minutes, prepare this simple vegetarian soup. Serve with a hearty whole-grain bread.

The key to good mac and cheese is gooey cheese and the perfect creamy sauce. Here, I’ve simplified things to create this twist on a classic. Instead of thickening cream or milk, I grabbed a natural cheese sauce, then simply added a Mexican cheese blend to give it that must-have gooeyness.

At first glance, it might seem strange to see the words ravioli and soup together. But I figure if Jewish folks cut through matzo balls and Chinese folks break apart wontons, we Italians should be able to join in by throwing ravioli in our soup. Though I’d like to pretend I’m a trendsetter, I’ve really just created a twist on tortellini soup for the sake of saving fat and calories. In my grocery stores I can find lower-fat ravioli, but I can’t find lower-fat tortellini. If you do find the tortellini, feel free to return to the more traditional and make this soup with tortellini. But I’m pretty happy with it as is, and I think you will be too. Note that if you can find it, Rosetto also makes a whole-wheat ravioli that’s delicious and just as low in fat and calories but packs 6 grams of fiber per serving (I buy it at Whole Foods). The bag is slightly smaller (22 ounces instead of 25), so you’d need a bag plus a few more ravioli to make the recipe as written, but it’s worth buying.

This dish is insanely great for potlucks. Instead of other lasagnes that you can slave over for hours, you can now spend just 10 minutes throwing this together. And the best news is that it can be assembled up to 1 day in advance. After preparing it, simply cover it with plastic wrap and store it in the refrigerator (be sure to remove the plastic wrap before baking!) so it can be baked just before serving. Make sure you find a brand of ravioli with as little fat as possible. Some are laden with tons of fat and calories, yet they don’t taste any better than those that are lower in fat and calories. Rosetto also makes a whole-wheat ravioli that’s delicious and just as low in fat and calories but packs 6 grams of fiber per serving (I buy it at Whole Foods). Though the bag is slightly smaller (22 ounces instead of 25), so you’ll need a bag plus a few more ravioli to make the recipe as written, it’s worth buying.

If you prefer, you can always substitute a brown rice, whole-wheat, or whole-grain pasta for the fiber-enriched variety. I get a lot of letters and e-mails from home cooks around the country saying they are able to make my recipes for the whole family even though their spouses and children won’t generally eat healthy food, because my recipes actually taste fattening. To keep with that tradition, I opt for the fiber-enriched pasta since it adds needed fiber to our diets while still tasting more like traditional pasta.

Gina: If you’ve never spent a summer in the South, then you don’t know heat like we know heat! Baby, this dish is perfect for a sultry Memphis evening, because it requires very little cooking. The shrimp and zucchini are grilled briefly, and the rest of the ingredients are simply heated in olive oil for a few minutes, to coax out their flavor. Then everything is tossed with pasta shells, and you are done, sugar. We call for cherry tomatoes, but feel free to use Sweet 100, currant, or pear tomatoes, or any other small tomatoes available at your local farmers’ market. Best of all, you’ll walk away from the table feeling satisfied but not too full. Choose a nice Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio, and you are set.

Pat: This is another one of those dishes that take me back to my childhood. I loved my momma Lorine’s lasagna, and to this day, I crave the molten layers of gooey cheese, rich tomato sauce, tender noodles, and beef. The pleasure of this dish is not just in the eating, it’s in the making and baking. When Momma’s lasagna is in the oven, our entire house smells like an Italian grandma has moved in. Lucky for me, my family loves this dish as much as I do, and Gina has learned to make this lasagna as well as my mom does. We like to make ours with cottage cheese, because we love the tangy flavor, but you can substitute the traditional ricotta if you prefer.

Pat: A passion for pasta via Memphis equals . . . barbecue spaghetti?!? Initially, our customers were skeptical about trying this dish—that is, until Tony and I started giving out free samples to everyone who came through the door. After about two weeks, the sampling wasn’t necessary, because people were hooked. These days we go through about 200 gallons of barbecue spaghetti a week; people from all over the country go wild for the tangy, saucy noodles tossed with smoky chunks of meat (it’s become one of our best-selling dishes). And we promise, after making this dish, you’ll understand why. Serve it as a side dish (with barbecued or roasted meats) or as a meal.

Pat: When I was growing up in Memphis, everyone had their own special mac-and-cheese recipe. Traditionally, the matriarchs used elbow noodles, but my girls love experimenting with different pasta, and we fell in love with cavatappi, because its tubular spiral shape holds plenty of cheese sauce, making every forkful a delight (of course, old-fashioned elbows will also work just fine). A piquant, cheesy white sauce and a crispy topping made from potato chips and bacon creates the best—and most indulgent—version of mac and cheese that we have ever tasted. Served alongside roast chicken, or with a simple green salad and a glass of great red wine, this is the ultimate comfort food.

If you have beautifully ripe fresh plum tomatoes, peel and seed them for the sauce. If it isn’t tomato season, opt for canned tomatoes, but include a few fresh plum tomatoes to give the sauce a taste of freshness. I like the sweetness of jumbo lump crabmeat in these agnolotti, but if that is not available, substitute any type of fresh, sweet crabmeat, or even fresh sea or bay scallops cut into 1/2-inch pieces.

This meat filling is similar to the one for cannelloni on page 165. You can use them interchangeably.

I always roast meats by adding some liquid to the roasting pan first, then allowing it to cook away and the meat to brown. The aromatic steam penetrates the meat before the surface of the meat is seared by the heat. Then I add more liquid as the meat cooks, to make a delicious pan sauce. Mortadella is one of those ingredients that give a tremendous amount of flavor to meat-based ravioli or cannelloni fillings. Think of mortadella as the Italian version of bologna, seasoned with Italian spices and studded, mosaiclike, with pistachios and cubes of seasoned pork fat. Thinly sliced mortadella is delicious as part of an antipasto assortment or in a sandwich. Add the mortadella to the meat and vegetables when they’re fresh out of the oven: the steam coaxes the flavor out of the mortadella. To grind the meat-and-vegetable mixture, you can use a hand-cranked meat grinder or a grinder attachment for an electric mixer. In either case, choose a disc that is fine but not too fine. Although it isn’t absolutely necessary, when I have besciamella handy, I like to stir a little into the meat filling. It helps to bind it and adds a smooth texture. You can prepare this filling with a combination of beef, veal, and pork, or with leftover roasts, like turkey, pork, or beef. If you’re making this filling with leftover meat, reheat it by simmering it with its own gravy and the porcini-soaking liquid, the soaked porcini, and some vegetables, like diced onions and celery and shredded carrots. When the meat is warmed through and moist and the vegetables are tender, season them, add the remaining ingredients, and grind as above.

I am always telling you not to add oil to the water when you cook pasta, because it will reduce the adherence of sauce to the pasta. Cooking long, flat pasta—like these lasagna noodles—is the exception. They have a tendency to stick together when they cook; the oil will help prevent that. Inevitably, some noodles will break. Save the pieces; they will come in handy to patch the layers of lasagna. You’ll notice in the meat-sauce recipe that the final consistency of the sauce should be fairly dense. Following that pattern, I suggest you drain the ricotta first, to remove a lot of the moisture. Removing excess moisture from the ingredients will result in a finished lasagna that is more compact and intense in flavor. You may assemble the lasagna completely up to a day before you serve it, but don’t cook it until the day you plan to serve it. Lasagna tastes better and is easier to cut if it is allowed to stand about an hour after it is removed from the oven. It will retain enough heat to serve as is, or, if you prefer, pop it back in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes. My favorite way to serve lasagna is to bake it and let it stand 3 to 4 hours. Cut the lasagna into portions, then rewarm it in the oven.

To keep them both intact, add the little “pockets” of ricotta and the eggplant pieces just before serving the pasta or turning it into the baking dish. It is one of the nuances in cooking that make a difference. When you take a bite of the finished pasta, you’ll get little bursts of different tastes, which you wouldn’t enjoy if the eggplant pieces were broken apart and the ricotta was mixed in with the pasta. If you choose to bake the pasta, make sure the pasta is well moistened when it goes into the baking dish—the heat of the oven will dry it out a little. You can toss little pieces of mozzarella or Fontina cheese in with the pasta before adding the ricotta and eggplant if you like. Just make sure the consistency of the pasta stays fluid and creamy.