There was a time when calamari was not much consumed in America and it was considered a cheap fish. But Italians love calamari, and it became the fish of choice of the Italian immigrants. You can find calamari today as a delicacy in contemporary restaurants of every ethnicity. Spicy calamari with linguine is a trademark of Italian American restaurants all over America.
This marinara sauce is great tossed with any pasta for a quick and easy weeknight dinner that will leave you thinking, “Why didn’t anyone try this sooner?”
An ex-boyfriend’s mom—who emigrated from Colombia—made the best meat sauce—she would fry sofrito for the base and simply add cooked ground beef, sazón, and jarred tomato sauce. My version is a bit more bougie—it calls for caramelized tomato paste and white wine—but the result is just as good.
Spaghetti is a common variation in modern Thai cooking. It’s so easy to work with and absorbs the garlicky, spicy notes of pad kee mao well.
This is what I call a fridge-eater recipe. The key here is getting a nice sear on the sausage and cooking the tomato down until it coats the sausage and vegetables well.
This sauce is slightly magical. The texture cloaks pasta much like a traditional meat sauce does, and the flavors are deep and rich, but it’s actually vegan!
In this lasagna, soft layers of pasta and béchamel are interspersed with a rich tomato sauce laden with hearty Mediterranean vegetables.
Cabbage is the unsung hero of the winter kitchen—available anywhere, long-lasting in the fridge, and super-affordable. It’s also an excellent partner for pasta.
This pasta has some really big energy about it. It’s so extra, it’s the type of thing you should be eating in your bikini while drinking a magnum of rosé, not in Hebden Bridge (or wherever you live), but on a beach on Mykonos.