PastaLasagne al Forno
Thin layers, restrained sauce and a béchamel made properly. The failure mode is always the same — too much filling, not enough patience, and a slice that slides apart on the plate.
5 hrServes 8Medium
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Italian recipes
Short ingredient lists, exacting technique, nothing to hide behind.
9 recipes found
Pasta
PastaSpaghetti Bolognese
Milk before tomato, white wine rather than red, and three hours at a bare blip. A real ragù is a meat dish loosened with tomato, not a tomato sauce with mince in it.
4 hrServes 6Medium
SaladsCaprese Salad
Three ingredients and nowhere to hide. Everything depends on the tomatoes being ripe and the mozzarella being fresh, at room temperature.
10 minServes 4Easy
PizzaWhite Pizza with Ricotta and Garlic
No tomato at all. Ricotta, garlic oil and mozzarella, finished with lemon zest and rocket so it never tastes as heavy as it sounds.
25 hrServes 4Medium
PizzaNeapolitan Margherita Pizza
A 24-hour cold-fermented dough, uncooked tomato sauce, and the hottest oven you own. Three toppings, and every one of them has to be good.
25 hrServes 4Hard
PastaSpaghetti Aglio e Olio
Five ingredients, twenty minutes, and the whole dish depends on getting the garlic exactly golden — a shade darker and the oil turns bitter.
20 minServes 4Easy
PastaSpaghetti alla Carbonara
No cream, ever. The sauce is just egg, cheese and pasta water, brought together off the heat so it turns silky instead of scrambling.
25 minServes 4Medium
BakingGarlic Bread with Parsley Butter
Raw garlic grated to a paste, not chopped, so it melts into the butter instead of catching and turning bitter in the oven.
25 minServes 6Easy
BakingBrown Butter Olive Oil Cake
Two fats doing two jobs: browned butter for nuttiness, olive oil for a crumb that stays damp for days. It is better on day two than on day one.
1 hr 15 minServes 10Medium