Ricotta

I like this baked ricotta warm and slightly underbaked to a soft, creamy consistency. Avoid the grainy, flavorless, commercial ricottas from the supermarket, and seek out a fresh, artisanal version. Bake the cheese in a Spanish-style cazuela or small attractive casserole and serve it at the table so your guests can help themselves.

This dish was inspired by one of my favorite Italian meals, bistecca fiorentina, a huge, rare grilled steak dressed simply with salt and lemon juice. Instead of the traditional T-bone steak served in a Tuscan ristorante, I opted for tri-tip, a less expensive but super-flavorful cut from the triangular end of the sirloin, popular in the central coast region of California.

Gnocchi is one of those dishes that many home cooks shy away from. Whether they’re made of potatoes or cheese, the process seems mysterious—until, of course, you finally take the plunge and make a batch yourself at home. These ricotta gnocchi are quick and easy and the perfect launch into your gnocchi-making career. Once you get the hang of rolling them off the tines of the fork, there’s nothing to it. And when you’ve become the accomplished gnocchi-maker you never thought you’d be, you’ll find all sorts of ways to serve them. Try them with a fresh tomato sauce, or simply toss them in this sage brown butter.

This not-too-sweet tart is the perfect ending to a spring meal. The key to keeping the pastry nice and crisp is to bake it ahead and then scoop out some of the center, to make room for the filling. Don’t overmix the ricotta filling or you’ll smooth away those luscious natural curds in the cheese. At Lucques, we add dried blueberries to the fresh blueberry compote, giving it an unexpected chewiness.

Look in any Sicilian cookbook and you’ll find a recipe for the popular side dish, or contorno, of cooked greens with currants and pine nuts. I make Swiss chard the main attraction of this dish, layering it onto a savory tart with rich and tangy goat cheese, then topping it with sweet currants and toasted pine nuts. Use a crumbly, slightly aged goat cheese, such as Bûcheron, Rodin Affiné, or the domestically produced Laura chanel aged chèvre. Feel free to substitute any other tender greens, such as the tops of beets or turnips, or a bunch of young mustard greens for the Swiss chard.

Savory sausage, bitter kale, and sweet tomatoes—is there a better trio? Instead of cooking them in a braise, I throw them on pizza.

When i was a kid, one of my favorite fall activities was hunting for wild mushrooms with my brothers in the woods around our home. For this pizza, make sure the mushroom pieces are all roughly the same size so they cook evenly. The runny egg yolk that sauces this pizza binds all the flavors together.

Fresh spinach and cheese is one of my favorite combinations. Here, the blast of the heat from the oven wilts the greens into the melted cheese. To brighten the flavors, I toss in a bunch of fresh herbs, too. If you have a pizza oven or stone at home, use it here. It’ll char the edges of the leaves and make them crisp.

Traditionally served at an Easter brunch or dinner, this pie is also a great brunch option on any day of the year. There’s no doubt that this pie is a full-size meal, with its combination of a creamy ricotta base and all the meat your heart desires. There are as many variations of this recipe as there are Italian families; the following is my favorite combination. Feel free to mix and match meats and cheeses according to your preferences.

This pie is traditionally served for Easter brunch. While it is sweet, it is not overly cloying. The trick is planning ahead, because the wheat needs to soak overnight. Just give yourself a twenty-four-hour head start to let the grano wheat soak, and it’s a breeze from there. This dense yet moist pie can be jazzed up with plump raisins, which add even more texture to this already unique pie. I recommend using a ten-inch deep-dish pie plate for this recipe to fully accommodate the filling.

No Italian Easter is complete without a ricotta pie. This light, citrus-tinged pie, with its creamy ricotta filling and sweet crust, sings of spring. Although this savory pie is traditionally served as a meal, it can also satisfy a sweet tooth. There are many different varieties of Sweet Ricotta Pie (pizza dolce) out there, but we stick to a very basic pie that will please all palates. If you’re feeling adventurous, try adding candied orange peels, grated lemon zest, miniature chocolate chips, or nuts to the filling.

This is about the easiest cheesecake you can make—it takes only fifteen minutes to assemble and one hour to bake. Although rich, this cake is lighter than traditional cheesecakes because it calls for ricotta instead of cream cheese.

This savory Italian pastry is traditionally served on Easter Sunday, but it is delicious any time of year. If you want to drain the ricotta, place it in a sieve lined with cheesecloth for about an hour; discard the liquid before proceeding.

These pastries are a specialty of Naples, Italy. The key to making them is using the freshest ricotta you can find. Do not substitute packaged ricotta, which can’t compare with artisanal varieties in terms of flavor or consistency.

Thin slices of roasted red, golden, and striped beets overlap atop a combination of ricotta and goat cheeses to produce a stunning shingled tart. The beets are sprinkled with grated fontina before baking. Use beets in a variety of colors if you can find them.

John Barricelli, an excellent baker, television host, and a longtime friend of Martha’s, learned to make this Italian grain pie, known as pastiera, from his grandfather. The wheat berries are fitting for the Easter holiday, as they symbolize rebirth and renewal. The grains get soaked in water overnight before they are cooked in milk. Afterward, they are mixed with ricotta cheese and pastry cream to make an exceptionally delicious filling. John sells the pies—and many other wonderful baked goods—at SoNo Bakery in South Norwalk, Connecticut.

In this pumpkin pie with Italian flavors, loosely arranged scraps of pasta frolla are draped over the filling to evoke a lattice design without any weaving. Pine nuts, clustered in groups of three, punctuate the grid.

Saba (mosto cotto), a reduction of grape must, has a flavor similar to that of balsamic vinegar. It is a largely undiscovered treasure here in the states, but is commonly found in Italian pantries. Our ace recipe tester, Alison Ladman, came up with an easy recipe for a homemade version. You can also use aged balsamic vinegar that’s been reduced by half its volume. If no specialty grapes, such as Concord, are available, a mixture of red and white grapes works well too. A drizzle of this syrup brings out the sweetness of the roasted squash and beautifully offsets the saltiness of the drier ricotta salata cheese.

Everybody has a tried and true basic lasagne recipe, but occasionally it’s nice to try something different. Somewhere along the way, I decided to replace the meat with beans, and the result was a hit. This lasagne keeps well in the refrigerator, and if you have leftovers, they freeze well. When I was single and living in Nashville, I would cool this lasagne and freeze portions in individual freezer bags. It was perfect to pull one out of the freezer in the morning before I went to work in the studio, then microwave it for a minute or two when I got home in the evening.