Italian

Originating in Italy, mascarpone is a mild and creamy fresh cheese with a consistency similar to soft butter or thick crème fraîche and a fat content between 70 and 75 percent. You may know it as the key ingredient in the decadent Italian dessert tiramisu. This recipe hails from Allison Hooper, award-winning cheese maker and co-owner of the notable Vermont Butter & Cheese Creamery. The overnight process is virtually effortless, and the resulting cheese may very well be the best mascarpone I've ever tasted. Editor’s note: Head this way for our favorite ways to use mascarpone →

Ask anybody's nonna: Making Sunday sauce is not an exact science. You can use other meats—like thick pork chops or short ribs—in place of or in addition to the ones listed here.

One whiff of this hearty, fragrant sauce bubbling on your stove and you'll think you've just parachuted into the Apennines right in front of a trattoria, in sheep country. The mountains of central Italy—notably in the Abruzzo and Molise regions—have always been populated by shepherds. Consequently, lamb is the basic meat, and the cheeses are made from sheep's milk. Shoulder would be our cut of choice, but really any lamb stew meat will do. Even though the recipe calls for boneless meat, if you have some lamb on the bone, throw it in. The bones will add flavor and will be easy to remove once the sauce is cooked. Lamb is fatty, so the sauce will benefit from overnight chilling and subsequent degreasing. But if you can't bear to throw away that yummy lamb fat, roast some potatoes Italian style—cut up in small pieces with lots of rosemary—and use the lamb fat instead of olive oil.

As important as it is to develop feel and instinct when making dough, there is a metric formula for making pasta all'uovo. For every 100 grams of flour, use 1 (50- to 55-gram) egg, which corresponds to 1 USDA medium egg.

The best tagliatelle made in Bologna, as by Oretta's mentor, the legendary Sister Attilia, are transparent. In southern Italy, the sfoglia is a bit thicker, but the pasta is just as good.

Whole-wheat flour may be used if desired.

This simple but delicious sauce is named for the town of Amatrice, in the mountainous northeastern panhandle of Lazio, near Abruzzo and the Marche. It seems incredible for such an easy, humble sauce, but this is one of the dishes self-appointed purists (read fanatics) will fight over to the death, or at least death by boredom. You have to use spaghetti or bucatini, they say—nor is it that simple, since there are spaghetti-only and bucatini-only factions. No cheese but pecorino is permitted. And woe betide you if you use pancetta in place of guanciale. There is, however, some room for individual expression. Some cooks use onion and chile, some not. A few swear by a splash of white wine "to cut the fat." The pecorino should ideally be that made in Amatrice or Abruzzo or Sicily, milder and fattier than pecorino romano, but pecorino romano is certainly what you'll find used in Rome. (Pecorino romano is a kind of cheese from a large designated area that includes the entire Lazio and Sardegna regions and the province of Grosseto in Tuscany, not just Rome; it is widely available in the United States.) Parmigiano is not used in amatriciana; it's made with cow's milk, and Rome and its mountainous hinterland is traditionally a land of sheep, after all. The shepherds of yesteryear, who spent months in the hills with their flocks, would make this flavorful dish for themselves. You can imagine that they were not worried about someone calling the food police if they grabbed a piece of pancetta instead of guanciale or one kind of sheep cheese instead of another. But they would never have used smoked bacon, which is not part of their tradition. Like many rustic, simple sauces that have found immortality on trattoria menus throughout Italy (and beyond), this dish is only as good as its ingredients. Take the tomatoes. The rugged mountainous area of northeastern Lazio where Amatrice is located was never great tomato-growing territory, or at least not for most of the year, so it was normal to use canned or jarred tomatoes. But the most delicious amatriciana I've ever tasted was made by Oretta (of course) at her house about halfway between Rome and Amatrice with tomatoes from her garden. After her ecstatic guests had practically licked their plates, she announced with an air of regret that this delicious dish was "not really l'amatriciana" because she had used fresh tomatoes. She later revised the statement to the more reasonable pronouncement that if you have a basketful of gorgeous San Marzano tomatoes from your garden, of course you should peel and seed them and make the sauce, and handed me a jar of her home-canned tomatoes to use in the winter. Whether you use fresh or canned, the result is a red sauce studded with bits of lightly fried pork, but you don't want it too red. The pasta and guanciale should be coated with a thin mantle of sauce, not hidden. Don't let the gloppy, oversauced trattoria version be your model. The cheese is sharp and salty, but, again, don't use too much. Many people consider onion a deviation from the sacred original, but hardly anyone thinks it doesn't taste good. In fact, it is delicious. If you use it, add a small chopped onion to the guanciale fat and sauté until transparent, then add the tomato.

Use the best, freshest eggs you can find, and don't even think of making this dish with eggs from stressed-out battery chickens. You can taste the difference. If you can find real guanciale, so much the better. Once the eggs have been added to the pasta, do not let the pan touch the heat directly or you will wind up with scrambled eggs.

Spinach and lowfat ricotta make it hearty—and good for you.

Kabocha squash is made for purées.

This is one of those serendipitous, stumbled-upon creations. I had made a big pot of polenta, and I poured the leftovers into a baking dish in a thin layer. The next day, foraging in the fridge for lunch, I came upon the polenta, a little fresh mozzarella, a little Parmesan (or was it Pecorino?). To make a pizza of sorts, I layered on the cheeses, added a splash of oil, crumbled over a handful of dried sage leaves, and put it into a hot oven. The result was completely satisfying. So what if it's not truly a pizza?—though perhaps it has a culinary ancestor somewhere, since there's really nothing new under the sun.

With slices of celery root and chefs' new favorite cheese, scamorza, pizza night just got a lot more fun.

There is so much folate in this pesto, you'll make a pound of serotonin before bedtime, which means a night of great sleep and a smile in the morning. Both kale and walnuts feed your lover's brain with the omega-3 ALA , which is converted into molecules that protect your brain cells and are linked to a lower risk of depression. The pesto is equally delicious on pasta or brushed on grilled chicken.

This is one of the simplest and yet tastiest preparations of eggs I've ever had. One afternoon, a friend and I unexpectedly dropped in on my friend Mario in Trieste. It was lunchtime, and he had a big basket full of fresh eggs he had brought down from the Carso, the high plateau surrounding Trieste. Eggs it was for lunch, served with a bowl of radicchio salad. We were just a few people that day, but this recipe is so very easy to modify for smaller or larger groups.

Crunch-crunch-crunch will end up as munch-munch-munch when this salad is served. Flavor is obviously crucial in food, and certainly this salad has flavor, but tactile sensation is also a very important factor in our food perception and appreciation. We want pasta al dente, celery crunchy, bread grilled. This salad has a lot of texture to enjoy.

"If you don't like sardines," says Lett, "you're going to today." Make sure to ask your fishmonger to remove the center bones but leave the head and tail intact.

A low, steady simmer is the key to this braise, so keep an eye on the pot.

English short ribs are cut lengthwise along the bone, so the meat sits on top. With a day or two of notice, any butcher should be able to cut them to order.

You probably won't have to salt the sauce itself since the clams are so briny; taste right before serving.

Butterflying branzino is a great way to fast-track when cooking a whole fish. Ask your fishmonger to do it for you.