Serves 4 to 6
Look for salt pork that is roughly 70 percent fat and 30 percent lean meat; leaner salt pork may not render enough fat. If it is difficult to slice, put the salt pork in the freezer for 15 minutes to firm up. Use high-quality imported Pecorino Romano—not the bland domestic cheese labeled “Romano.”

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
To create an authentic-tasting version of Pasta All’Amatriciana we needed an alternative to hard-to-find guanciale, or cured pork jowl. Humble salt pork, though an unlikely solution, provided the rich, clean meatiness we were after. To ensure tender bites of pork throughout, we first simmered it in water to gently cook it and render fat, a step that allowed the meat to quickly turn golden once the water evaporated. Finally, to ensure the grated Pecorino Romano didn’t clump in the hot sauce, we first mixed it with a little cooled rendered pork fat. Now the flavor of pork, tomato, chili flake, and Pecorino shine through in each bite.

Serves 4
Use a spoon to scrape the dark brown gills from the portobellos.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Using pancetta and its fat in our Spaghetti with Mushroom and Tomato Sauce recipe compensated for the lean nature of the mushrooms and made our mushroom ragu meatier. Portobello mushrooms gave our dish bulk, while smoky porcini gave it concentrated flavor. Adding tomato paste and fresh crushed tomatoes to our mushrooms after they’d browned sweetened our sauce but also let the mushrooms shine through.

Total Time: 45 minutes
Preparation Time: 0 minutes
Active Cooking Time: 30 minutes
Yield: 1 pound fresh pasta
Make Ahead: Pasta can be kept at room temperature for several hours
Difficulty: Intermediate

Fresh pasta is surprisingly easy to make at home. Yes, you will need a hand-cranked pasta machine, but the ingredient list could not be shorter (just eggs and flour) and the results are much better than anything you can buy.

You will be making 1 pound of Fresh Egg Pasta. We will be cutting the pasta into fettuccine that you should use for the Fettuccine Alfredo recipe in this lesson.

While we suggest using a pasta machine to cut fettuccine, you can cut fresh sheets of pasta by hand. Simply fold each sheet crosswise into thirds or quarters. Use a sharp chef’s knife and cut perpendicular to folds to form noodles of desired width. This technique comes in handy when you want to make wider shapes, like pappardelle or tagliatelle.

Here are the guidelines for cutting fresh by hand:

Pappardelle: 3/4 to 1 inch wide
Tagliatelle: 1/4 to 3/8 inch wide
Fettuccine: 1/8 to 1/4 inch wide

• We like Italian-made hand-operated manual pasta machines. We’ve tested the Imperia and Atlas pasta machines—the two major brands in Italy and widely available in cookware shops around the world—and found them equally good.

Total Time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Preparation Time: 30 minutes
Active Cooking Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Yield: 4 to 6 as a first course
Make Ahead: Serve immediately
Difficulty: Intermediate

This elegant dish has become a popular offering on Italian trattoria menus. It features a multitude of flavors—squashy, sweet, savory, buttery, herbal, and nutty—working together to create complexity, and contrasting textures—silky filling and pasta, crunchy nuts—to add interest.

The butternut squash must first be cooked to drive off excess moisture and render it soft and velvety; we use a microwave to expedite and simplify the squash-cooking process. Grated Parmesan cheese in the filling not only adds flavor, it also acts as a binder that holds the filling together.

The browned butter sauce is simple, but very rich. This dish is best served in small portions either as a first course or a pasta course before the main dish.

This recipe uses fresh pasta from the Fresh Pasta recipe. If you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to make the fresh pasta. You will need a food processor and pasta machine in order to prepare the pasta. To be as efficient as possible, make the pasta dough, prepare the squash filling while the dough rests, then roll out the dough while the squash is in the refrigerator. By the time the dough has been rolled out into thin sheets, the filling will be cool enough to use.

http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/learn-to-cook/2013/02/4-tips-for-making-homemade-ravioli/

http://www.yumsugar.com/Butternut-Squash-Ravioli-Recipe-28700365

SERVES 4

In step 5, if your skillet is not broiler-safe, once the clams have started to open transfer the mixture to a broiler-safe 13 by 9-inch baking dish lightly coated with olive oil; scatter the shrimp over the pasta and stir them in to partially submerge. Broil and serve as directed. Serve this dish with lemon wedges and Aïoli, stirring it into individual portions at the table.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Traditional recipes for fideuà can take several hours to prepare. We wanted to streamline the recipe but keep the deep flavors of the classic recipes. To replace the slow-cooked fish stock of the classics, we made a quick shrimp stock using the shrimp’s shells, a combination of chicken broth and water, and a bay leaf. We also saved some time by streamlining the sofrito, the aromatic base common in Spanish cooking, by finely mincing the onion and using canned tomatoes (instead of fresh), which helped the recipe components soften and brown more quickly. The final tweak to our recipe was boosting the flavor of the shrimp by quickly marinating them in olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper.

Serves 4
In step 5, if your skillet is not broiler-safe, once the pasta is tender transfer the mixture to a broiler-safe 13 by 9-inch baking dish lightly coated with olive oil; scatter the shrimp over the pasta and stir them in to partially submerge. Broil and serve as directed. Serve this dish with lemon wedges.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
Traditional recipes for fideuà can take several hours to prepare. We wanted to streamline the recipe but keep the deep flavors of the classic recipes. To replace the slow-cooked fish stock of the classics, we made a quick shrimp stock using the shrimp’s shells, a combination of chicken broth and water, and a bay leaf. We also saved some time by streamlining the sofrito, the aromatic base common in Spanish cooking, by finely mincing the onion and using canned tomatoes (instead of fresh), which helped the recipe components soften and brown more quickly. The final tweak to our recipe was boosting the flavor of the shrimp by quickly marinating them in olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper.

Serves 4

Cooking the pasta right in the pasta sauce infuses it with flavor and streamlines cleanup.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
To prepare our spaghetti with shrimp, we seared the shrimp over high heat until just barely cooked through, then set them aside while we prepared the sauce and pasta. We used just one pan for cooking both the shrimp and the pasta so the finished dish picked up the flavors left behind by the shrimp. Cooking the pasta in the pasta sauce infuses flavor and streamlines the preparation.

Serves 6 to 8

Why this recipe works:
Following the success of our Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna, we decided to create a hearty sausage version. Boosting the flavors of the ricotta filling with a hefty amount of Parmesan and some fragrant basil certainly helped our cause, as did boldly flavored Italian sausage. To keep things simple, we found spooning dollops of ricotta over the noodles—instead of spreading it—and pinching off pieces of raw sausage helped to streamline assembly. As for the sauce, the test kitchen’s favorite jarred sauce (Bertolli Tomato and Basil Sauce) worked perfectly.

Serves 8 to 10

Our favorite lasagna noodles are Barilla No Boil. You can thaw the spinach overnight in the refrigerator instead of microwaving it. But do warm the spinach liquid to help smooth the ricotta.

WHY THIS RECIPE WORKS:
To make a spinach lasagna worthy of its name, the first step was simple: increase the spinach. Frozen spinach tastes just as good as fresh and cuts down on kitchen time as well. For the finest, most even texture, we use the food processor to chop the spinach and to smooth out the ricotta cheese. The final secret for extra spinach flavor is using some of the spinach liquid but not enough to make the lasagna watery. We nixed the traditional creamy béchamel in favor of a fresh, herb-flecked tomato sauce but still layered in plenty of mozzarella and Parmesan for added richness.

Serves 6 to 8, or 10 to 12 as a side

It’s crucial to cook the pasta until tender—just past the “al dente” stage. In fact, overcooking is better than undercooking the pasta. Whole, low-fat, and skim milk all work well in this recipe. The recipe can be halved and baked in an 8-inch-square, broilersafe baking dish. If desired, offer celery salt or hot sauce (such as Tabasco) for sprinkling at the table.