Pasta

Bocconcini, literally “little mouthfuls,” are small rounds of fresh mozzarella that are often sold wherever larger rounds of fresh mozzarella are made. (If you can find bocconcini made from water buffalo’s milk, they’re even better for this pasta.) Bocconcini can vary in size from store to store. If yours are larger than the type called ciliege (cherries), you may want to cut them into quarters, so they fit neatly on a spoon alongside the pasta. If you can’t find bocconcini of any type, cut larger pieces of fresh mozzarella into 1-inch cubes.

I like to eat the pasta hot with room-temperature sauce, but you could just as well serve it all cold. In that case, toss the tomatoes and pasta while still hot, then set them aside until you’re ready to serve them. Finish the pasta by tossing in the basil and bocconcini and serve. I can go on detailing recipes with minimal changes in the ingredient list or techniques, but what I want to leave with you is not only recipes but the understanding, and hence the liberty and confidence, to deviate from the recipe path and come up with a version of the plate that reflects your personal taste and local produce. When you reach this point, cooking is truly a joy.

The “riga” in “rigatoni” means “stripe.” It is those stripes and rigatoni’s wide, hollow shape that make them perfect for a chunky sauce like this one. You can make the sauce a day or so in advance; just don’t add the ricotta and grated cheese until the last minute.

Usually, pasta recipes contain something substantial such as sliced mushrooms, vegetables, seafood, or meat. This recipe, like the aglio e olio on page 103, has a very simple sauce and will make 6 “Italian” portions. Simplicity goes a long way, especially with intense flavors such as anchovies and capers. If you’d like more substantial servings, increase the spaghetti to 1 1/ 2 pounds and the rest of the ingredients by one-half.

Sprinkling the onions with salt as they cook not only seasons them, but extracts some of the water and intensifies their flavor. Keep the water hot before adding it to the soup, as described below, and you won’t interrupt the cooking—it will flow smoothly from start to end. Remember this when braising meats like the short ribs on page 218, or when making risotto. You can use the method outlined below—bringing the beans to a boil, then soaking them in hot water for an hour—anytime you want to cook beans without soaking them overnight, or anytime you’ve forgotten to soak them a day in advance. It works especially well here because, by soaking the pork along with the beans, you kill two birds with one stone. (I soak the dried or cured pork to remove some of the intense curing-and-smoking flavor. If you like it intense, just rinse the pork under cold water before adding it to the soup.)

Spaghettini is very similar to vermicelli, and both are somewhere between capellini and spaghetti when it comes to thickness. Because they cook quickly, it’s best to remove them from the boiling water when they are still undercooked, and to let them finish cooking in the sauce. I find this pasta very delicate but zesty and wouldn’t serve it with cheese. But if you love cheese in your pasta, have it.

This classic and delectable pasta dish originated in the region of Abruzzi, in the little town of Amatrice, northeast of Rome, where it was traditionally prepared without tomatoes. But it is the Roman version of pasta all’amatriciana, with tomatoes, that I share with you here—the version that is best known and deservedly popular. Lots of onions; chips of guanciale (cured pork cheek, now available in the United States, see Sources, page 340), pancetta, or bacon; and San Marzano tomatoes are the essential elements of the sauce, Roma style. Note that the onions are first softened in water, before olive oil is added to the pan—a traditional but unusual step that is said to make the onions sweeter. The standard pasta used is bucatini or perciatelli (spaghetti are only tolerated). The long, dry strands of perciatelli resemble very thick spaghetti but are hollow like a drinking straw. When cooked, they are wild and wiggly, so you might be tempted to cut them. Do not—once you’ve got them on your fork, they’re delicious and fun to eat. It is quite all right to slurp them. Indeed, as kids we would suck them in so fast that the end of the noodle would whip us in the nose, splattering sauce all over our faces. What a wonderful memory!

A deli side-dish favorite, macaroni salad is a gimme on every table in America come summertime. Everyone has a favorite recipe—some contain ham, some peppers, some bacon, and some peas. But all contain high-fat mayonnaise and white pasta, a fundamentally bad combo. White pasta is replaced here with whole-wheat shells, and the high-fat mayo with low-fat mayo. I added a few bits and pieces, like smoked paprika, to give it some personality.

Though they are both outrageously rich pasta sauces, carbonara and Alfredo are distinctly different. The base for Alfredo is cream and Parmigiano-Reggiano. The base for carbonara includes onions, bacon or pancetta (originally it was guanciale—cured pigs’ cheeks), egg yolks, and Parmigiano-Reggiano or Pecorino Romano. At almost 1,000 calories per serving, this dish was ripe for a makeover.

Considering that this dish is the Holy Grail of Mama’s cooking, I truly debated whether or not to mess with it. It took six attempts to make over this dish, but I finally figured the low-cal version out—and Mama loved it!

The dirty little secret about Penne alla Vodka is not the vodka but the hefty amount of heavy cream. Vodka is colorless, odorless, and without much flavor—not really attributes of a superstar ingredient. It’s the combination of cream and tomato sauce that gives this dish its signature flavor. The traditional cream is swapped here for low-fat Greek yogurt.

Of all the dishes that were suggested for this book, mac ’n’ cheese came up most often. Everyone loves it—and everyone knows how nutritionally bad it can be. Calories start at 600 per serving and go into the thousands. It’s a dish that has become so rich that taming its fatty side proved to be quite a challenge. The base of the sauce in this version isn’t cream, but a puree of cooked onions and garlic. It gives the dish lots of flavor with not so much as a gram of fat. The very hot oven makes the breadcrumbs on top get nice and crunchy. It’s the combination of crisp and gooey textures that makes this a winning dish.

These little lasagnas, made with fat-free ricotta and reduced-fat mozzarella, are cheesy and satisfying and totally big on flavor. Make sure the dishes (8-inch, preferably) you use are broilerproof—they go under the flame to make the cheese brown and bubbling right before serving.

It’s the combination of bitter broccoli rabe and hot sausage that makes this one of the greatest Italian-American dishes. My mother began making this when my Uncle Joe became a butcher and could provide an unlimited supply of his own handmade pork-and-fennel sausages. It’s still one of my favorites of Mama’s dishes. Here I use whole-wheat penne and low-fat turkey sausage—but the rest I left just like Mama’s.

I once ate true Fettuccine Alfredo at Ristorante D’Alfredo in Rome, where a giant picture of its namesake owner hangs on the wall. The big flavors of the dish were brought to bear by combining outsized amounts of butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano. It was that simple: butter and cheese. Not so simple, though, if you’re watching your waistline. This version eliminates the cream that many American versions call for but retains a little bit of the butter for flavor. The velvety-smooth texture is re-created with yogurt and thickened chicken broth. It may not be as authentic as the original, invented by Alfredo di Lelio, but it’s a very tasty version we can all live with (for a very long time).

Bolognese is a type of ragù—a thick, hearty meat sauce for pasta. As in most traditional types of ragù, this version starts with mirepoix, a combination of finely diced carrot, onion, and celery, to give the sauce flavor and texture. But instead of having beef as the star ingredient, this lightened-up version features ground turkey and is ladled on top of whole-grain egg noodles.

In Italy, pasta and meats are generally served as separate courses, but in this country, we like to combine them into a single main course. This creamy pasta pairs well with the sauteed chicken.