Italian Recipes & Food Ideas

If you forgot to meal plan this week and are looking for a last-minute dinner to throw together tonight, allow me to suggest this chicken enchilada baked ravioli. Yes, I did say enchilada and ravioli in the same breath. Why should you have to choose between the two? This recipe brilliantly takes Mexican enchiladas and gives them an Italian twist by subbing cheese ravioli for the traditional corn tortillas. It might sound a bit sacrilege, but this food mash-up is totally worth a try.

This seasonal twist on classic stuffed shells keeps the tender cooked pasta, the ricotta, and the stringy, melted mozzarella cheese, but ditches traditional filling for the flavors of Thanksgiving. And we mean that literally! These shells are stuffed with stuffing, roasted vegetables, and even bits of leftover turkey. If you love a next-day turkey sandwich, you have to try this quirky twist on Thanksgiving leftovers.

A vegetable-heavy casserole is a must on any Thanksgiving table — and welcome any fall night. Here, a generous mixture of winter greens and tender artichoke hearts is smothered with a crispy topping of thick polenta slices. The polenta not only makes this dish gluten-free, but it also makes it extra hearty. That means it’s also well-suited for the vegetarians at your table.

This is the part of summer we’ve all been waiting for — when the best tomatoes of the season take over the tables at the market. Of course you’ll want to get your fill or them eaten as is. Along with creamy mozzarella and fresh basil, these tomatoes are the simplest way to perk up that weeknight chicken breast. There are more than a few ways to cook chicken breast, but this method is hands-down my favorite. It starts with well-seasoned pieces of chicken and a wickedly hot pan.

I wait all year to eat my weight in caprese salads during the summer. While I could easily make them through the year, they’re barely average with sub-par, out-of-season tomatoes. So it’s worth it to hold out until tomatoes peak and creamy, fresh mozzarella begs to join in on the fun. But eating caprese in its classic form is just one way to enjoy it — this twist on a grilled cheese just might rival the original.

This is the kind of recipe that calls for a bottle of red wine and a reason to celebrate. Did you survive that Monday of back-to-back meetings? Well, that’s definitely a reason to celebrate. Of course making it to Hump Day is a cause for celebration, too. Sure, these steak roll-ups feel fancy, but they’re so quick and easy that they deserve to be made whenever the occasion feels right, be it a busy Wednesday or a slow Sunday.

Rollatini is a little like the love story of eggplant parm and lasagna. Typically rollatini is made by flouring and then frying thin slices of eggplant (like eggplant parm), which are then filled with a creamy ricotta cheese mixture (like lasagna). The resulting eggplant rolls are baked until tender in tomato sauce. Rollatini is also a really great meal for those rare times when you might have a lasagna craving, but don’t want pasta.

Caponata is a Sicilian eggplant relish made with celery, onion, and tomatoes cooked into a sweet and sour sauce and served with bread as an appetizer. Some versions have olives or capers, others call for raisins or zucchini, and some even use hot peppers or anchovies. The results of this nuanced cooking process are delicious, if not exhausting. Here, the slow cooker takes care of all the cooking, making this a mostly hands-off dish that can be used as an appetizer or main course.

When I’m in charge of bringing lunch to a picnic or tackling lunch duty for the whole family, my game plan is tried, true, and most importantly, simple: one sandwich that’s big enough to feed everyone. And right now, in the spirit of celebrating ripe summer produce, this version gets its inspiration from one of my favorite fresh salads.

Lately cacio e pepe, a humble Roman pasta dish, has been getting quite a lot of praise — and for good reason. The simple pasta dish that’s tossed with nothing more than black pepper, olive oil, and Pecorino Romano cheese is a lesson in just how flavorful basic ingredients can be. So why limit this powerhouse of flavor to just pasta? These inspired croutons just might rival the original.

While it’s not always necessary to peel carrots, there are a handful of instances — like cutting them to eat raw, or grating them for a salad or cake — where you’re better off removing their slightly bitter skin. But that doesn’t mean you should just toss the peels in the trash or compost bin. Think of carrot peels not as waste, but as a whole other ingredient in your kitchen.

It’s the age-old dinner conundrum: pizza or quesadillas? Now, with pizzadillas, you don’t have to choose. What a time to be alive! Just like pizza and quesadillas, which are endlessly customizable, pizzadillas are very versatile. This recipe calls for pizza sauce, mozzarella, bocconcini balls, and green pepper, but feel free to use whatever you have on hand and experiment with your favorite flavor combinations.

File this one under “Things I Wish I’d Thought of First.” How ingenious, right? Thai red curry paste and creamy risotto come together to make this satisfying bowl of comfort food — with a kick. This recipe features some elements of a traditional risotto — garlic, onions, arborio rice, chicken broth — but it deviates from the classic when you add the ginger, red Thai curry paste, coconut milk, lime juice, brown sugar, soy sauce, and baby bok choy.

Can you bake or slow-cook frozen chicken? Nope … but you can pressure-cook it! Toss rock-hard frozen pieces of chicken into the pressure cooker and serve fall-off-the bone flavorful meat in less than 30 minutes. Slow-cooking, stovetop simmering, or oven braising frozen chicken will keep it in the “danger zone,” (temperatures between 40°F and 140°F) long enough for the meat to host a stomach-wrenching bacteria party.

Do you have leftover risotto hanging out in the fridge? If not, I suggest you make a batch, let it cool, and then make these roasted garlic and goat cheese arancini — little rice balls stuffed with fontina. To make arancini, you simply take leftover risotto, form it into balls, cover the balls in breadcrumbs, and fry them.

There’s no denying the comfort that a grilled cheese sandwich brings. In fact, I don’t think of a grilled cheese sandwich as kid food — I think of it just as good food. The concept is highly adaptable too, so if you’re looking for a new version, or perhaps a gluten-free one, here’s one for you. You know those big tubes of shrink-wrapped polenta you see in the store? They make perfect “bread” for an Italian-inspired grilled cheese sandwich.

While I love being in the kitchen, there are times when I just need a quick but nice meal. I have a list of these meals that I keep tucked away for when company shows up unexpectedly or I want a bit of an extra-fancy feel to our average daily meal. Polenta, ravioli, and especially gnocchi tend to be my go-to’s because the meals are filling, beautiful, and easily adapted to what I have on hand at the time.

This time of year slays me; in New York City, the snow is pretty much finished, the ear muffs have been packed up and early daffodils and crocus blossoms are poking their way through the packed city soil. And yet, there is no food growing yet. It’s the season when my dreams are populated with ramps, fiddlehead ferns and asparagus.

Ahh, one of our favorite dishes in the summer; fresh tomatoes, buffala mozzarella, and fresh basil layered together, and then drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper.Caprese salad is a popular Italian summertime dish. The dish incorporates the colors of the Italian flag, and uses the freshest summer ingredients. Tester’s NotesI just received a beautiful pile of late summer heirloom tomatoes from a gardening friend.

When I was a kid, my mother took a cooking class with Giuliano Bugialli and learned how to make this dish. It tastes so rich and divine that you’d never suspect it’s so economical and quick to make! She’d let me request a special meal for my birthday, and I often requested this dish. Tester’s Notes: Kathryn published this recipe way back in 2009, and I’ve had it on my to-make list since then. I finally got around to it and wow was that overdue.

For a summertime treat that’s a snap – or a shake – to create, consider the shakerato. This gelato-infused version makes a quick yet elegant after-dinner coffee and dessert rolled into one.We’ve written about our love for the caffè shakerato before – this Italian warm-weather drink typically consists of espresso, sugar, and ice agitated in a cocktail shaker until smooth and frothy.

My parents visited Sicily last fall (lucky dogs!) and brought back a wonderful recipe to accompany any main dish at dinner. I’ve riffed on the combination of blood oranges, mint, and red onion and added my own spin. The results? Shockingly good in color and in flavor! For me the perfect salad is crucial to any supper. The lighter notes can take center stage as the base of the meal or they can play in contrast to something heavier.

Tall, golden loaves of panettone are everywhere this time of year. Traditionally eaten around Christmas and New Year’s, this fruit-studded sweet bread can be enjoyed plain or simply toasted — but it doesn’t have to be. How about crisp-custardy panettone french toast or even a savory panettone panzanella with pancetta and brussels sprouts? • Panettone Bread Pudding at BBC Good Food: Fluffy panettone bakes into a beautiful, flavorful bread pudding.

With December finally here, I can’t seem to find enough hours to get through each day. Between Christmas shopping, holiday parties, and work projects, life on Monday through Saturday is hurried and I’m sprinting just to keep up. But then, just in the nick of time, there is Sunday.I diligently set aside Sunday as a time for personal rest and relaxation. Don’t expect me to brush my hair, and don’t even ask why I still have mascara on my face past noon.

Some days you just have to go all out. Maybe you have soft cheeses and crackers before dinner, open a bottle of good wine, make spaghetti and meatballs and then decide that garlic bread is also important. When you can’t stop thinking about garlic bread, this is the recipe for you.There are two important things to remember when making garlic bread. First, use a good baguette that you like. I’m not a fan of using squishy white sandwich bread.

Fettuccine alfredo is one of those dishes that is somehow more than the sum of its parts. Of course, when those parts are primarily butter, cream, cheese, and pasta, it’s extremely hard to go wrong. There are dozens of slightly different ways to make this dish. Parmesan and butter all on their own are traditional, but a splash of cream does have the advantage of making the alfredo extra delicious (not to mention indulgent).

This is one of those recipes inspired by what we had on hand – half a loaf of stale whole-grain bread, pattypan squash from our CSA, and cherry tomatoes and rosemary from a recent food swapFree free to use any summer squash from pattypan to zucchini or yellow squash, and to substitute any Italian- or French-style bread – preferably stale, or leave it out overnight to get the best, crusty texture.

I had the privilege of learning this recipe from a very seasoned chef in Italy during a cooking class at his family restaurant. It was no surprise that he made creating this dish from scratch look simple. But after a few attempts (and mishaps) in my own kitchen, what surprises me now is that it’s something I can put together without looking at instructions.

In Easy Tasty Italian: Add Some Magic to Your Food, Santtini approaches Italian cuisine with a touch of whimsy and a dash of chocolate-chili-gold stardust powder. Hold on to your pasta-makers, folks, this is definitely not your nonna’s cooking.At its heart, Easy Tasty Italian is just a whole lot of fun. And how can you not have fun when you’re playing with gold dust powder and pinot grigio butter?!

A sformato is a close cousin to the soufflé. It has all the same creamy custard-y goodness, but without the hassle of whipping egg whites or the anxiety of collapsing domes. It’s meant to be rather humble. This is also an easy dish to make gluten-free, and it works well as the first course for a fancy dinner or as a light lunch with a salad. Like a soufflé, a sformato starts off with a bechamel sauce.

Heart of the ArtichokeTanis’ own kitchen ritualsDavid calls himself a restaurant chef that prefers to cook at home. Chez Panisse allows him to bring the best of home cooking to the tables there in the six months a year he cooks at the restaurant. The rest of the year he, presumably, is cooking up the dishes in this book (all beautifully and simply photographed by Christopher Hirsheimer of Canal House Cooking).

This recipe was inspired by one of our favorite vegetable gratins—a combination of summer ingredients that you should eat now, before Fall arrives and you switch to pastas like this. (P.S. We’ve also made this dish without the bacon, and it’s just as good.)This pasta is a cinch to put together. But you can make it even easier by caramelizing the onion and cooking the bacon ahead of time.

We have given you a lot of tomato sauce recipes — we really, really love simple tomato sauces, whether they’re made with fresh tomatoes or canned. But I want to revisit one more easy sauce (and we have an even simpler sauce for you coming tomorrow). Lately, my favorite way to make tomato sauce is in the oven. The flavor — oh, it’s so much better! A long, slow roast for your tomatoes lets their flavor slowly concentrate into a chunky sauce.

Hey, it’s Friday, everyone! If you weren’t already excited for the weekend, we have one more reason for you. It’s called a tipsy affogato. That’s “tipsy,” as in “containing alcohol,” and “affogato,” as in “we don’t know what, but it’s something frozen and Italian and delicious.” Hellooo, favorite new summer treat!

It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of Rose Gray last week. Rose was the co-author of the iconic River Café Cookbooks as well as co-owner of the River Café restaurant in London. In the early nineties Rose was my icon – my Alice Waters. She may not be as well known on this side of the Atlantic but in the UK and Ireland she and her partner Ruth Rogers were possibly the first of the great modern chefs where simplicity and good ingredients were everything.

It pays to leave cookbooks lying about when my mother comes to town. This week she surprised us with two great mid-week home-cooked meals. All I had to do was take the picture.Last night’s spread was from Nate Appleman and Shelley Lindgren’s A16: Food & Wine (Ten Speed Press), a book from the acclaimed A16 restaurant in San Francisco that, despite it having come out a year ago, I hadn’t yet explored.

You know that our most basic go-to meal is a riff on pasta with meat and greens. It’s such an easy one-dish meal, and so satisfying. Here’s our latest exploration of the theme: a hearty, spicy, and bold pasta that is wonderful after a long day of work in the garden. This is just like our other pasta templates; it’s adaptable to whatever you have around. But the main thing is to really brown the sausage and also to cook the kale well.

Tuesday night some old friends who live upstate came for dinner, and surprised us with an armful of Morel mushrooms and a sack full of ramps. I’d planned a simple roasted chicken and vegetable dinner, but when I saw the gift I’d been brought, I clicked into cook-by-instinct mode, the kind of cooking we are about to start espousing in the second half of our online Kitchen Cure (today is the last day to sign up and catch up.)I had to practice what I’m about to preach.

Spring is progressing, and the season for early spring foraged treats like morels and ramps will be over soon. So eat them while you can still find them! This pasta takes these two spring delicacies and puts them together in one simple, quick pasta.And if these two good things are out of season already, or hard to find, then try dried mushrooms and leeks or scallions instead. In fact, I had to use dried morels myself.

Earlier today we told you about our cocktail party strategyWe’re basically taking a caprese salad and putting it on a stick, and no doubt you’ve seen a variation of these skewers on a buffet or two in your day. But they really are hard not to like, and they couldn’t be easier to throw together.We bought bocconcini, bite-sized mozzarella balls, to make the process even quicker, but you could also cut a big ball of mozzarella into chunks.

Looking for one more dish for Thanksgiving, or maybe a first course appetite-teaser? Maybe you should try this dish of pumpkin ravioli from chef Salvatore Corea of New York City’s Alloro. This is a very fun dish; we love pumpkin ravioli, and the sauces that accompany the pasta here are deceptively easy.Alloro is an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side – thank you to chef Salvatore Corea for this delicious dish! We’ll be trying it out soon.

Dana’s post last week on cavalo nero kale reminded me that we’re in ribollita season. Ribollita is a simple, earthy Tuscan soup made from whatever vegetable scraps and stale bread is on hand, and is eaten in the fall and winter months.The word “ribollita” means “reboiled” and is used to refer to this soup because it requires a lot of cooking to get the right flavor and texture. It’s very hearty and filling, and keeps you warm in the winter.

Remember when we contemplated the first meal cooked in our new apartmentWe love steaming artichokes and pulling off the leaves one by one to scrape between our teeth. But other than that, we rarely cook big, baseball-sized artichokes. So we loved the way this recipe highlighted their beautiful, floral shape, with stuffing tucked in every layer, ready to be scooped up with the leaves.There is one warning to this recipe. It is full of anchovies.

For the sauce-hungry crowd, here is a basic tomato sauce, with some lemony and spicy elements for adding an optional zing. It’s easy, quick, and isn’t a boring old sauce. Basic sauces were one of the requested items from Cure-takers. This week’s assignment was to add a new skill to your cooking arsenal.

This is not a combination we would have thought of on our own.We recently enjoyed a cheese plate at a restaurant, where a hard goat cheese was paired with a tomato garnish. At first, we asked the bartender who served us if he could swap the tomatoes with something else (the figs looked good), but he insisted. And when we tasted them, we realized there was something different going on.

But sometimes when I just want some dinner after a long day, I do need to be reminded of the basics. For this you need only a handful of ingredients: a big tomato, half an onion or a few shallots, garlic, olive oil, some fresh basil, sage, or rosemary. Some red wine really helps, but don’t knock yourself out. Swirl over some tortellini from Trader Joe’s, pour the rest of the wine into a glass and you have yourself a very nice dish of pasta – all in about 10 minutes flat.

Here’s a recipe from a reader, SarahW, for a simple pasta dish using Swiss Chard (it’s been a hot topic of discussion on the Open Threads for a while) and Feta cheese. With greens such as spinach about to come into season on the East Coast, this would make a great spring dish. Pasta With Greens and Feta 6 Tbsp. olive oil (or less) 4 cups chopped onion 8 cups packed chopped bitter greens (e.g.