Pasta

No-boil noodles cut down on the prep time.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

If canned unsweetened coconut milk is not readily available in your area, you may substitute 1/2 cup heavy cream and 1 tablespoon sweetened flaked coconut. Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

This ragù would also be excellent served over instant polenta instead of pasta.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Perfect before grilled fish or roast chicken.

An appetizer that is simple to make, delicious and very appealing.

The combination of ricotta, Parmesan and goat cheese and porcini and shiitake mushrooms makes this classic dish new again. Offer red wine throughout dinner and Italian ice cream and cookies-gelato and biscotti-for dessert.

Pan-roasting or toasting in a dry cast-iron skillet is a cooking technique used often in Mexican cuisine. We use it here to bring up the flavors of corn, onion, and pumpkin seeds. We created this salad as a main course, but it's also a terrific side dish. Active time: 50 min Start to finish: 1 hr

This attractive and flavorful main course is perfect for weeknight entertaining.

This recipe was inspired by Aunt Gladys's beef, from Laurie Colwin (Gourmet, January 1992), and Nathalie Waag's leg of lamb with tomatoes and garlic (Gourmet, September 1986). The best chuck roasts for this recipe come from the supermarket—fancy butcher shops' meat is too lean and often becomes dry when cooked.

Dried udon noodles are found in the Asian foods section of most supermarkets; if unavailable, use linguine instead.

Cook: Nancy Harmon Jenkins
Source: Cucinaamore.com It's difficult to imagine a more mundane-sounding dish than Pasta with Baked Tomato Sauce — and yet this extremely simple pasta is a breakthrough, not like any other you've ever eaten. And so good you'll make it again and again. The sauce is made from roasted cherry tomatoes, very ripe ones. These diminutive tomatoes with the big taste are then covered with a cheesey-garlicky-bread crumb mixture and set in the oven. Just before serving, you tear some basil leaves into the roasted tomato mixture and that's your sauce, right in the oven dish: add some corkscrew or butterfly pasta and you have dinner. Italian cookbook author Nancy Harmon Jenkins points out that the ony trick to this dish is using really ripe cherry tomatoes'which are easy to find all year long. If they're not available, use any red, ripe tomatoes and quarter them.

Dried porcini are sold at Italian delis and in many supermarkets.

"To celebrate my birthday, my husband took me to Assaggio, one of my favorite restaurants here," writes Christy Wall of Portland, Oregon. "As I always do, I ordered the bow-tie pasta with wild mushrooms, butternut squash, spinach, garlic and olive oil."

This is a great pasta dish to serve for company. Chances are good that you'll find the Asian ingredients— increasingly carried by everyday food shops—at your local supermarket. We used the Thai Kitchen brand, which is widely available.