Weeknight Meals

This dish has become very popular on restaurant menus, because it seems extra-special—and tricky to make at home. Special it is, but in fact it’s quite easy to pull off, as it uses frozen lobster tails—no live lobsters to boil. The key is to brown the butter well for a deep, nutty flavor.

Italy is best known for its short-grain rice dishes, like risotto, but long-grain rice is popular there as well. My grandmother Nonna Luna loved to cook rice, and her secret was toasting the grains before adding the broth and a tablespoon of hot sauce. Unlike in a risotto, the grains stay fluffy and separate, not starchy. This dish is super easy to make—the only trick is taking the full six to seven minutes needed to toast the rice grains. That step gives the dish a nutty flavor that takes it from good to great, and the shrimp make it a full meal.

We think of mac and cheese as a true-blue American invention, but this homey dish, made with nutty farro, is actually very traditional. Farro is one of the first cultivated grains and was ground to make bread, cereals, and pasta in ancient Italy. It’s becoming more popular in this country, but you still may need to visit an Italian specialty store to find it. Use it in salads, pilafs, and soups as you would use barley, which is also a good substitute for farro.

Here’s a dish that is so much more than the sum of its parts, which are all simple pantry ingredients that you probably have on hand right now. Bread crumbs were traditionally a thrifty way for Italian housewives to use up leftover crusts of bread, but they really make the dish; sautéed in olive oil, the bread crumbs get crispy and make a crunchy crust on each strand of pasta. I use black and green olives to get both the fruity and the salty flavors, but if you have only one or the other the dish will still be great. It really doesn’t get much easier than this—or more appealing.

I don’t cook with jalapeño peppers often because I’m not a huge fan of spicy food, but when I was served grilled fish topped with a spicy pesto at a beach-side restaurant near San Diego, I loved the way the heat woke up the flavor of the fish. I thought it could do the same for pasta, and sure enough, it’s a great combo. Packed with spinach and arugula, this pesto is more condiment and less sauce than the typical basil pesto, and a bit lighter thanks to the substitution of walnuts for oily pine nuts. Fusilli is the perfect partner for any kind of pesto because the sauce gets trapped in the ridges so you get flavor in every bite. Serve leftovers of the dressed pasta with roasted chicken, fish, or beef.

The sauce for this pasta is really a simple fresh salsa, and if you are making it in the summer months, feel free to substitute two or three diced beefsteak tomatoes for the canned. It is just as good at room temperature as it is served hot, so it can be made ahead of time—perfect for large get-togethers and buffet-style parties. The sliced steak turns this dish into a meal. I’m seeing smoked almonds used more and more in Italy and I have fallen in love with the deep flavor they add; however, as they are quite salty, when I use them in a dish I reduce the amount of salt I would normally add.

We should all be eating more dark leafy greens, but sometimes a side dish of steamed chard is a tough sell. Not so with this pasta, which is full of bright colors and flavors. If you’re not familiar with ricotta salata, it may remind you of feta cheese but with a milder flavor and creamier texture. This is a pasta dish I really feel good about eating, and with all those greens and the protein contributed by the garbanzos, it’s a complete meal.

This dish hails from northern Italy, where the climate is mushroom-happy and cream sauces are the norm. In lean times, frugal Italian cooks often substituted mushrooms for meat in dishes like this one because their meaty texture and earthy flavor give the sauce real substance. I often make this as a veggie option for parties, and even the carnivores go for it.

These sandwiches are out-of-this-world fantastic! They’re my take on a tuna melt, complete with gooey cheddar cheese and a sweet-and-sour mayo, but with plenty of lemony tang and peppery arugula. Be sure to slather it on the bread generously before piling on the tuna steak, greens, and cheese to keep everything moist and delicious.

Burger purists often complain that substituting ground chicken or turkey for beef results in a dry, bland burger, but that needn’t be the case; these are super juicy and full of flavor. To keep them moist, I mix some of the garlic mayo right into the burgers themselves, then smear a bit more on each bun for good measure. Easy and yummy, yummy, yummy.

The burger phenomenon has never really taken hold in Italy, but the flavors in these dainty little sliders would be right at home there. Taleggio is a northern Italian sharp, creamy cheese that keeps the burgers moist and delicious. The heat of the patty melts the cheese and releases the basil’s fresh, herby perfume, making for a decidedly elegant burger experience.

Nothing warms up a cold winter night like chicken soup, especially when there are hearty chunks of chicken and pieces of pasta waiting in the bottom of the bowl. When I came home from the hospital with Jade, friends and family took turns bringing food by for Todd and me. Sandra Tripicchio, who is an invaluable part of putting together my shows and books, made us a big batch of this lemony chicken soup, and it’s been a staple in our house ever since. You’ll love the way the lemon brightens the soup’s flavor.

Beef filet always makes an occasion special, but in the case of these mini beef kebabs it’s the parsley sauce—almost a fresh salsa—that makes the dish shine. For an interesting change, mix it up and substitute fresh pineapple chunks for the tomatoes; they make for a surprisingly harmonious combination. One note: Don’t marinate the beef any longer than three hours because the vinegar in the marinade will break down the meat and ruin its texture.

Here’s my take on Pad Thai. There are a lot of ingredients here, but most of them keep well in your pantry, and substituting is easy—you could use finely chopped cabbage in place of the bean sprouts or substitute soy or hoisin sauce for the nam pla.

You can find fresh Chinese-style (and Japanese-style) wheat noodles at most supermarkets these days. They’re a great convenience food and, for some reason, seem to me more successful than prepackaged “fresh” Italian noodles. Here they’re briefly cooked and then combined with a stir-fried mixture of pork, vegetables, and Chinese sauces; it’s very much a Chinese restaurant dish. Both ground bean sauce and hoisin sauce can be found at supermarkets (if you can’t find ground bean sauce, just use a little more hoisin), but you can usually find a better selection (and higher-quality versions) at Chinese markets. Usually, the fewer ingredients they contain, the better they are.

True ragu is a magnificent pasta sauce, a slow-simmered blend of meat, tomatoes, and milk. The real thing takes hours, for the meat must become tender and contribute its silkiness to the sauce, the tomatoes must dissolve, and the milk must pull the whole thing together. But a reasonable approximation of ragu can be produced using ground beef or pork or, even better, prepared Italian sausage.

Few things are simpler than a quick tomato sauce over pasta, but as an unending diet it can become somewhat tiresome. Here it’s completely jazzed by the addition of a hefty amount of garlic and a few anchovies. The transformation is as easy as it is remarkable. Canned anchovies—packed in olive oil—are the easiest to use here. Salted anchovies, if you have them, are fine also, but you must mince them first (after cleaning them, of course, which you do under running water, stripping the meat from the skeleton).

Pesto has become a staple, especially in late summer when basil is best. But pasta with pesto does have its limits; it’s simply not substantial enough to serve as a main course. The Genoese, originators of pesto, figured this out centuries ago, when they created this dish, which augments the pesto with chunks of potatoes and chopped green beans, making it a more complex, more filling, and more interesting dish. Recreating this classic dish is straightforward and easy. Note that if you start the potatoes and pasta simultaneously, then add the green beans about halfway through cooking, they will all be finished at the same time and can be drained and tossed with the sauce in a snap. This technique may sound imprecise, but it works.

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.