Italian Food

Italian carbonara is famously rich, combining pancetta or guanciale (cured pork jowl), egg yolks and cheese. Chef Linton Hopkins adds his own Southern accent to the dish with house-cured pork and local eggs.

Marcia Kiesel wilts parsley to make a clever topping for quick-cooking veal scaloppine.

Creamy burrata cheese and tender asparagus pair well in this elegant pasta dish

This tomato-based pasta sauce is easy to make—just let all the ingredients simmer in a slow cooker for a few hours and serve with your favorite spaghetti.

Milk-soaked bread helps make chef Massimiliano Alajmo's beef-and-pork meatballs incredibly light; bits of chopped olive make them extra-flavorful. The thick tomato sauce coats the meatballs nicely and doubles as an excellent pasta sauce.

Salvatore Denaro's pollo alla diavola ("devil's-style chicken") is intensely seasoned. Two days prior to cooking, Denaro infuses white wine vinegar with a big bunch of dried Sicilian oregano for a marinade. Then he seasons the marinated chicken with an exotic herb mixture, or condimento, that includes Turkish bay laurel ("the only kind to use," Denaro says) and myrtle leaves. Feel free to experiment with a variety of herbs for the condimento.

Porchetta, a traditional Italian street food, is a moist and fatty fresh ham covered with skin that's heavily seasoned with salty garlic, rosemary, fennel and lemon. Chef James Lewis adds some heat to his version with crushed red pepper.

As a nod to the grape harvest, chef Ben Towill adds golden raisins to this tangy caponata. It's delicious on toast or with pecorino cheese.

Efisio Farris, the executive chef at Arcodoro in Houston, says that his mother used only eggplants from the first pick of the season (le primizie) for this dish because of their supple texture and earthy-sweet flavor without a hint of bitterness. But if you don't have the primizie option, you should seek out firm, heavy eggplants with smooth, evenly colored skin. Check for ripeness by pressing them lightly; if this leaves an imprint, the eggplant is ready to use.

Former Gotham Bldg Tavern chef Tommy Habetz describes gnudi as "ravioli filling without the pasta."; He learned how to make his outrageously light and creamy version while working at the former New York City restaurant Pó.

This recipe for arancini—fried risotto balls—comes from Renato Poliafito, who got it from his Sicilian cousin Emanuele Sanfilippo. "Renato is obsessed with arancini," says Matt Lewis, "especially this version with toasted pistachios." These arancini are the size of tangerines, filled with creamy, cheesy rice, studded with nuts and green peas and encased in a great crunchy crust.

Antonio Ciminelli prepares this starter year-round with whatever produce is in season. In the fall, that means apples, mushrooms and late-harvest zucchini, fried in a batter made extra-light and crisp by adding sparkling wine and whipped egg white. The fritto misto is best eaten hot from the pan, perhaps served in a paper cone.

Chef Chris Cosentino braises beef shank and oxtail in red wine to make a brasato he serves with house-made mint pappardelle. Instead of oxtail, this dish uses just beef shank. Fresh pappardelle from a store replaces the house-made kind.

This dish, from chef Mathieu Perez is a take on the classic Italian mozzarella-tomato-basil Caprese salad. It depends on young, very fresh zucchini and summer squash. To prepare the recipe like Perez does at the restaurant, grate the olives finely with a Microplane grater instead of pureeing them.

These baked eggs topped with melted butter are Piero Incisa della Rocchetta's go-to breakfast. The dish was also a favorite of his grandfather Mario, the founder of Italy's world-famous Sassicaia winery in Tuscany.

"Grill masters all over the world have noticed that when you grill a piece of meat and then anoint it with some kind of fat, it mixes with the meat juices and creates instant sauce," Steven Raichlen says. In Tuscany, olive oil is the fat of choice for finishing herbed veal chops like these.

Traditional panelle, the popular Sicilian chickpea fritter, is deep-fried. Melissa Kelly forms her panelle onto a sheet, lightly sprinkles it with goat cheese and bakes it. Then she cuts the panelle into pieces and sautés them until they're crisp.

In adapting this recipe from chef Shea Gallante, Marcia Kiesel traded a labor-intensive fresh pasta for premade wonton wrappers and was thrilled with the results. Wonton wrappers are milder-tasting than fresh pasta, which makes them a better showcase for the nutty brown butter, delicate young pecorino cheese and fresh marjoram.

Creamy butter beans get flavor from a miso dressing in this terrific vegetarian dish .

Kevin Sbraga varies these wonderful nutty biscotti, sometimes dipping them in melted dark chocolate for an extra layer of flavor.

This simple green salad is a refreshing antipasto, or appetizer.

These tender gnudi, adapted from Nancy Silverton's Mozza Cookbook, are delicious with buttery chanterelles.

"Give mackerel a chance," begs Michael White. The Spanish fish he imports from Europe is grilled, which makes the skin enticingly crisp, then topped with a refreshing tomato-caper salsa.

These crunchy biscotti are surprisingly rich-tasting thanks to aged Gouda and chopped walnuts. Try other hard cheeses, too, like aged Prima Donna, a lighter Gouda-style cheese from the Netherlands.

"This is one of my favorite things on the planet," says Marco Canora about his savory rabbit stew. He loves sharing the recipe with his students because it's an opportunity to teach them about making battuto (similar to soffrito), a mixture of sautéed onion, celery and carrots that's the base for many Italian dishes.

This half-pizza, half-calzone is named for Italy's Mount Vesuvius.

Using a recipe Nancy Silverton taught her for a super-buttery dough, chef Dahlia Narvaez made vanilla-scented cookies shaped like mezzaluna ("half moon") pasta and filled them with a mixed-berry jam she found in Panicale.

Daniel Humm's exceptionally easy risotto gets a sublime earthiness from fresh and dried porcini mushrooms.

In this luscious, tomato-rich stew, Marco Canora cooks calamari slowly until it becomes supertender. He says calamari is absolutely essential to the success of the dish, because it releases its liquid as it simmers, which adds a huge amount of flavor to the sauce. "I'm a big fan of substitutions," he says, "but not in this case."

Cooks in Italy fry cauliflower to bring out its nuttiness. Here, Ethan Stowell deep-fries it for a salad with salty prosciutto and nubby farro (a variety of whole-grain wheat).

"Always err on the side of making ravioli dough a little bit sticky," Domenica Marchetti says. "You can sprinkle on more flour as you roll it out."

The style of this gooey lasagna is called free-form because the pasta can be arranged in different ways—for instance, folded over the filling—instead of traditionally layered.

The ethereal Italian dessert sauce zabaglione (known in French as sabayon) consists of egg yolks beaten with sugar and the Sicilian fortified dessert wine Marsala. Steeping vanilla seeds in the Marsala adds lovely flavor; folding in whipped cream increases the decadence factor.

"I may never use ground meat in my peppers again," said Fran Parisi, Grace Parisi's mother, when she tried this super-flavorful sausage-stuffed version. Another revelation: Smaller Italian frying peppers are much easier to brown in a skillet than the typical green bell peppers, and they also cook faster.

This knife-and-fork dessert from pastry chef Michael Glissman is a fantastic showcase for seasonal fruit at its peak; caramelizing the fruit on the grill intensifies its flavor. The grilled bread served alongside soaks up the sweet juices.

Chef Gabriel Kreuther makes gnocchi using fromage blanc, a fresh French cheese that creates a light texture and lovely tang (sour cream is a fine replacement).

More Gnocchi Recipes

Meringata—Italian for "meringue cake"—is an elegant yet homey frozen dessert of whipped cream sandwiched between meringue rounds. Rolando Beramendi slices the meringata and serves it with a warm chocolate-espresso sauce.

Chef Bryan Vietmeier merges two Italian-American favorites here: chicken parm and pepperoni.

This sweet and salty pizza is topped with salty pancetta, gorgonzola, and juicy fresh figs.

This light, silky panna cotta tastes a lot like hot cocoa in custard form. The brittle is easy to make; heat sugar and water on the stove, swirl in butter and spiced pepitas (shelled pumpkin seeds), then let cool.

If you don't have fresh oregano, use 1 teaspoon of dried, crumbled oregano.

This is a delicious cross-cultural take on chicken soup. The angel hair pasta represents Italy; the soft-boiled egg and chile oil evoke Japan. The recipe is from Gerard Craft, an F&W Best New Chef 2008.