Italian

The keys to a light, airy semifreddo that melts in your mouth? Just enough sugar to sweeten it and keep it soft in the freezer. Also, "gently folding and not overmixing," says Laiskonis. Go over the top by serving it with cinnamon whipped cream and chile-chocolate sauce (or use store- bought chocolate sauce).

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Garlic scapes are the soft, lime-green-colored stems and unopened flower buds of hard-neck garlic varieties. Scapes have a mild garlic flavor and a slight sweetness, which makes them a prized addition in the kitchen. You can find them in the early summer and midfall at farmers' markets. If you grow your own garlic (which is easy), trim the scapes off before their flowers open. This forces the plant to focus on bulb production and increases the size of the garlic cloves. My Aunt Denise introduced me to the idea of garlic-scape pesto. Here I use it to sauce pasta; you can also spread it on crostini or use as a pungent dip for crunchy vegetables. If all you have are salted pistachios, forgo the salt in the recipe and add salt to taste at the end.

Serve this chunky, all-purpose tomato sauce with fish, chicken, pasta, or disks of polenta (shown here).

This is a gem from my mother's notebook of Nonna Mary's recipes. I remember Nonna Mary serving these tomatoes along with assorted grilled meats during the summer in Cesenatico. They are also a perfect accompaniment to veal cutlets, and together they make a great sandwich, one of my favorite lunches that my mother would pack for me to take to school.

When I was growing up in New York, from third grade through high school, I was blessed with the opportunity to spend my summers in Italy. I would stay with my grandmother in Cesenatico, hang out at the beach with my friends, and eat the wonderful food my grandmother cooked. I have never become accustomed to the traditional American breakfast of eggs and fried pork products, or even cereal. Some fresh bread with butter and jam and caffèlatte is my preferred breakfast, with the proportion of coffee to milk increasing as I have gotten older, from just a drop in a large cup of milk when I was little, to mostly coffee with a splash of milk as an adult. But even better than bread and butter is a breakfast sweet such as my grandmother's ciambella. She always seemed to have some on hand. It's very easy to make and keeps wonderfully on the kitchen counter for as long as a week. It may well keep even longer, but I've never been able to resist eating it for long enough to find out. The classic shape of a ciambella is a ring; in fact, there is a saying for when something doesn't work out: non tutte le ciambelle riescono col buco, which means, "not all ciambelle come out with a hole." My grandmother always made hers in the shape of a loaf—it was no less delicious for it, and that is how I still prefer to make it.

Soft, creamy risotto topped with warm roasted vegetables makes a complete meal in a bowl. If you don't like the idea of standing at the stove and stirring risotto to a perfect consistency, this is the method for you. Thirty minutes in the oven and this risotto comes out cooked to perfection while you and your beloved wind down from your day. If you've made Roasted Winter Vegetables earlier in the week, you can reheat leftovers as a topping here. If not, roast a favorite combination {mine is winter squash, yellow onion, and tomato} in the oven with your risotto.

{sauceless} When we found out our dear friends Katie and Parker got engaged, we packed up our pizza dough and big bag of greens from our garden and headed to their place for an impromptu celebration that's become a tradition in both our homes. Though the best pizza dough takes a little preparation {it gets more supple as it sits overnight}, a pizza topped with little more than fresh farmers' market finds can be thrown together on the fly like a grand game of Twister, with everyone's arms cutting, slicing, patting, and rolling in a tangle that is soon to become a very good dinner. Sip: Snappy and crisp Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand

Using fennel three ways—bulb, fronds, and pollen (or seeds)—adds great depth of flavor to this quick dish.

Use only the best quality wild salmon in this raw preparation.

A mix of chopped aromatics, like the Italian blend soffritto, is the base for countless recipes because it lends character to simple dishes. That's why we always have soffritto on hand. Freeze the extra from this recipe, then thaw, and you'll have the foundation for soups and sauces ready to go—no chopping required.

This take on a Roman vignole showcases the best and brightest of the season's bounty.

One day I swear I'm going to take gnudi off the menu at The Pig. We'll probably end up closing down, because it's one of the most popular items on the menu. Yet it might be worth the risk—it's been seven years of sheer hell making these little things. For cooks without a restaurant to run, though, gnudi are a dream. They're extremely simple—just a mixture of ricotta and Parmesan formed into stubby dumplings, then coated with semolina flour. They hang out in the fridge until the moisture in the ricotta has fused with the semolina to form a delicate skin. But when you must have them ready every day for service, it's another story. They're so temperamental—sometimes they're ready to cook after a day in the fridge, sometimes it takes two or three. I often jump the gun, cooking them too early and tearing my hair out as I watch them fall apart in the water. At home, though, there's no need to rush the process. It's easy to get right, as long as you give them three days to develop that skin—but not much longer or the skin will get too dense. In the spring, I'll occasionally leave out the brown butter and spoon Basil Pesto here and there.

Chicken meatballs turn this simple, seasonal soup into a satisfying dinner.

We usually turn to fish for omega-3 fatty acids and their brain-enhancing powers, but walnuts are a great vegetarian source of the nutrient.

Satisfy a hankering for high-fat Alfredo sauce with this light, no-dairy version. Oat milk and cashew butter stand in for heavy cream, keeping calories and saturated fat low.

Featuring paccheri rigati, a ribbed, tube-shaped pasta, this over-the-top casserole cooks in a 9"-diameter springform pan. But feel free to use rigatoni and a 9x9x2" baking dish instead.

In this recipe, a creamy parsnip purée stands in for a traditional béchamel.

I love these cheesy, salty, crispy wafers not only because they are so yummy, but because they are so versatile. I put them in bread baskets, add them to soups, and serve them topped with scoops of salad.