Chef Recipes Made Easy

The owner of four terrific restaurants and a longtime PBS cooking star, Lidia Bastianich is a master of homey Italian food with a modern edge. Here, F&W streamlines her simple, enticing Italian recipes into seven weeknight dinners.

Lidia Bastianich is one of the matriarchs of Italian cooking in America. She’s also a multimedia star: In April, she’ll publish her fifth cookbook, Lidia’s Italy, in collaboration with her new PBS series of the same name, in which she and her daughter, Tanya, visit 10 of Italy’s most spectacular locations. Although Bastianich has had tremendous success as a restaurant chef (her four restaurants include Felidia and in New York City, Lidia’s Kansas City and Lidia’s Pittsburgh), her roots are in home cooking, and she prides herself on her simple dishes. "Simple is the hardest to achieve because you don’t have anything to hide behind," she says. Here, F&W further streamlines recipes from Bastianich’s restaurants to create superb, quick Italian meals.

Published March 2007