Italy

This is a quick and easy cheesy vegetarian dish that can all be made in the time that it takes to boil the pasta. It's a Neapolitan dish that translates at "shoemaker's pasta" because poor shoemakers couldn't afford expensive ingredients, but tomatoes, cheese, basil, and pasta were readily available to these urban workers. Some say that the shoemakers were sometimes paid with cheese in barter from their equally poor customers.

I like it best with a short tubular pasta for catching the halved cherry tomatoes, but any short dried pasta works well, especially something textured to catch the cheesy sauce. I made this one with Calamarata from the wonderful Pasta Somma di Gragnano; great pasta makes such a difference!

I saw a lot of cuttlefish in Venice, but it's hard to find in the USA. I finally found fresh cuttlefish at the Kam Man Asian market in Quincy.

Cuttefish are cephalopod mollusks like squid and octopus. For cooking they are most like squid. 

This is a very traditional recipe from Veneto, the region of northeast Italy that includes Venice. You clean and cut up the cuttlefish meat, saute it briefly in seasoned oil, and simmer gently in tomato sauce until tender. It can also be made with little cuttlefish that must be cleaned and the beaks and ink sacs removed, but they can be otherwise cooked and eaten whole.

This is a delicious pasta dish made with the bewitching pink Sicilian Pesto Trapanese, completely different from the green Ligurian pesto so familiar to American diners. The pesto from Trapani uses crushed almonds, tomatoes, and cheese, rather than the basil and pine nuts of the Genoese version.

Unlike northern pasta dishes that are often served with ravioli and other fresh egg pastas, the southern ones are more often served with dried pasta like the wonderful IGP-protected Pasta di Gragnano.

Here's a light fish dish from Livorno, on the Tuscan coast not far from Pisa. It bursts with flavor from tomatoes, capers, and black olives. You can make this with any sort of flaky white fish, or with freshened salt cod (baccalà). It's a great weeknight dish because the whole thing comes together in under 30 minutes, and except for the fish, most of the ingredients may already be in your kitchen.

This can be served on its own or with a side of pasta, rice, or polenta. You can dress it up by adding some mussels or littleneck clams. 

You will deglaze the pan with 1/4 cup of white wine, so pick something that you'd like to drink with dinner!

This simple Tuscan dish showcases aglione, the giant mild garlic of southern Tuscany. We know it in this country as elephant garlic, and it's not so easy to find these days; I found the one I used here in a Wegman's Supermarket.

All it is is a puree of elephant garlic fried in oil and then simmered with tomatoes and a chili for 20 minutes. It traditionally served with rustic Tuscan pici, a thick, often hand rolled spaghetti.

Here's a nice light pasta dish from Basilicata and Puglia. It has an enchanting summery flavor. Make this when you have plenty of fresh mint on hand. The nights are getting cold, I expect a frost soon, so today I harvested about 10-12 mint plants and this classic recipe was my first thought.

This is traditionally made with strascinati, a sort of stretched orecchiette common in those regions, but any short flat pasta will do.

Polenta is often served soft and hot like mashed potatoes, but it's also really good baked. You cook it on the stiff side, and then spread it in a buttered pan and bake it to get it hot and puffy and a little crispy on the edges.

It is common to layer Fontina, Grana Padano, or other thin-sliced or grated cheese into the polenta, especially if it will be served as an appetizer. If it will be served with fish or with mushrooms, then the flavor of the cheese may clash; while common, it's not necessary.

Udine is a foodie haven northeast of Venice in Friuli-Venezia-Giulia. It has its own cuisine unlike much of the rest of Italy, heavily influenced by Austiran Alpine cooking.

This is another simple fish dish that's great for a weeknight. This fresh trout baked with lemon juice, olive oil, and marjoram comes together with very little effort and it never fails to please. 

In Udine, this is traditionally served with Polenta baked in the Oven.

Here's a spicy treat from hot, sunny Calabria! It's a very simple recipe, but it requires one hard-to-find ingredient: 'Nduja. 'Nduja is a spicy Calabrian paste of fatty pork and fiery Calabrian chilis. The spiciness of the meat is balanced by the sweetness of the onion, which is why you want a sweeter variety like Vidalia. 

And that's all there is to it: Sweet onion and spicy 'Nduja, held together in a smooth tomato sauce, and served over a good toothsome pasta!

Zozzona means a hot mess in Italian, and Pasta alla Zozzone is a rich delicious crowd pleaser of a hot mess! It's loaded up with everything to alarm your cardiologist: sausage, guanciale, pecorino romano, and egg yolks. There's tomato sauce too, so that's healthy.

This is from Lazio, land of the Big 4: Carbonara, Amatriciana, Gricia, and Cacio e Pepe. It's traditionally served with rigatoni or other short pasta. I used the wonderful Pasta Somma rigatoni from Gragnano. The pasta of Gragnano is hearty and toothsome and well able to support a rich sauce.