Pasta

Serve this with a basket of crusty bread.

Purchased wonton wrappers stand in for fresh pasta in this easy recipe.

The Hotel Le Maquis and its restaurant, L'Arbousier, are the labor of love of one remarkable woman, Catherine Salini. She bought the land many decades ago and built this charming inn very close to where she grew up in Porticcio. The rooms are decorated with antiques (personally selected and purchased by Salini), and the walls are hung with paintings by local artists. It's a true pleasure to dine on L'Arbousier's terrace just above the beach, with its wonderful views of the bay. Here you can taste the famous sardines stuffed with Swiss chard and brocciu (a local cheese), prepared by chef Gérard Lorenzoni Salini, Catherine's son. Another favorite dish is this lobster fricassee, which evokes the sunny splendor of this island treasure.

What to drink: Sangiovese wines are a classic pairing with robust pasta dishes. Try the Cantina di Montalcino 1999 Poggio del Sasso, a good-value Super Tuscan.

Here's a hearty and satisfying pasta that makes an easy entrée for a dinner party.

Deidre A. Pallouras of Rochelle Park, New York, writes: "My husband and I recently traveled to Cincinnati, where we dined at Daveed's at 934 in Mount Adams. Although everything we ate was delicious, we were most impressed by the incredible salmon with horseradish cream. I'd love to try to recreate the dish at home."

Mark Taylor of West Hartford, Connecticut, writes: "I started cooking out of necessity when I first graduated from college, since I couldn't afford to eat out. Having grown up watching my mother cook for our large family, I used her recipes. She was always trying new dishes whenever we had guests and sharing her adventurous attitude toward eating. These days, even though my wife and I both work, we still cook several times a week. Now I tend to rely on recipes I've picked up from restaurants and friends. I enjoy experimenting with different ingredients and figuring out new ways to improve a recipe, as I've done with the one here."

Active time: 35 min Start to finish: 40 min

In 1925 Wolff Brothers of Paterson, New Jersey, published a Yiddish English cook book with recipes culled from a kasha cooking contest run in all the Jewish newspapers throughout the country. "Recipes of thousands of Jewish dishes were sent us," they wrote modestly, "but we selected only the very best among them and these are listed here." The recipes included buckwheat blintzes, vegetarian buckwheat cutlets, and "a tasteful grits soup" made from their Health Food (merely unroasted buckwheat groats), green peas, and potatoes. The varnishke recipe was basically a kreplach-type noodle stuffed with kasha, buckwheat groats, and gribenes. Packaged bow-tie noodles,large and small, quickly replaced the flat homemade egg noodles in the American version of kasha varnishkes. The trick to a good kasha varnishke is to toast the whole-grain buckwheat groat well over a high heat for 2 to 4 minutes until you start smelling the aroma of the kasha. This will seal the groats so that there is a nutty, crunchy taste to them, a good foil to the soft taste of the noodles. When I make mine - a favorite in my family - I add fresh parsley and sometimes coriander. Although traditionalists use bow-tie noodles for this, try rigatoni, shells, or any other kind of noodle you like.

"I had a delightful dinner at Andiamo! Ristorante while on vacation in San Diego," writes Laverne Smith of Seattle, Washington. "Could you get their recipe for fettuccine carbonara? It was the best pasta I've ever had." Prepare the sauce while the pasta is cooking to ensure that the fettuccine will be hot when the sauce is finished; the heat of the pasta cooks the raw eggs that are tossed with it.

Serve this pilaf-like dish with mango chutney and cold yogurt.

This recipe can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Serve this zesty pasta with a salad of tossed winter greens sprinkled with shaved Parmesan or Asiago cheese, and a basket of seeded country Italian bread. Finish with orange sorbet and chocolate biscotti.

(Pasta con Ragù di Vitello, Salsicce e Porcini) Ragù is a beloved part of Tuscan cooking. Every person has his or her own recipe, but the basics are constant: It is a hearty sauce made with meat (beef, pork, veal, duck, even boar) and vegetables like carrots, tomatoes and onions, all cooked in wine and broth. And ragù is most often served over pasta. This recipe includes dried porcini mushrooms, which give the sauce a real taste of the Tuscan countryside.

This recipe was created to accompany Red Snapper Papillotes with Lemon and Thyme . Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.