Easy

In springtime, when farmers’ markets sell really fresh, locally grown asparagus—or if you’re lucky enough to pick spears in your own asparagus bed—cook them by the skillet method. You’ll find it concentrates the natural sweetness and subtle asparagus flavors that are at their peak for only a day or two. Butter and cheese are natural complements to asparagus, and here they both get a final delicious toasting. For details on how I trim asparagus—and a fine cooking method for the year-round spears that have been shipped to supermarkets—see the Scallion and Asparagus Salad recipe (page 35).

This is the pasta “sauce” I make in August, when just-picked tomatoes in all shapes and colors are piled on our kitchen windowsills—and it is too hot to hang around the stove. It’s a fast no-cooking preparation, but it requires ripe and juicy tomatoes, preferably homegrown or heirloom tomatoes from the farmers’ market. Be sure to have them at room temperature. The sauce actually develops in the hour or two when it marinates: salt draws the juices from the tomatoes, and they become infused with the flavors of basil and garlic. Then all you do is toss piping-hot pasta with the tomatoes and enjoy one of the rare treats of the whole year.

Marinara with the addition of canned tuna and capers makes a great pasta sauce.

If you happen to have some meatballs and sugo left over from the recipe on page 146, here’s a simple baked dish that will put them to good use. Just toss them with cooked cavatappi—spiral pastas that do look like corkscrews—and cheeses, then bake. You can also bake this in a mold and turn it out, as a lovely golden torta. Press the filling to fit into a 10-cup Bundt pan or soufflé dish, generously buttered and coated with bread crumbs. Sprinkle bread crumbs and grated cheese on the top (which will become the bottom), and bake at 400° until the edges are golden.

This is a fine fast sauce for Shrimp and Tomato Ravioli and Simple Ricotta Ravioli (preceding recipes) as well as for Potato, Leek, and Bacon Ravioli (page 186). Make the sauce just before the ravioli come out of the pot, for the freshest taste. You should definitely peel the tomatoes for this: see my method on page 261.

Spinach pasta is essential to Pasticciata Bolognese (page 200), but you can enjoy it in all the cuts and shapes of fresh pasta. It is best to start prepping the spinach well ahead of time, as detailed in the recipe, for the best texture. You can always freeze the dough until you need it. Spinach pasta is usually more moist than other fresh pastas and so will cook more quickly.

Marinara is my quintessential anytime tomato sauce. I can start it when the pasta water goes on the stove and it will be ready when the pasta is just cooked. Yet, in its short cooking time, it develops such fine flavor and pleasing consistency that you may well want to make a double batch—using some right away and freezing the rest for suppers to come. The beauty of this marinara sauce is that it has a freshness, acidity, and simplicity of taste, in contrast to the complexity and mellowness of the long-cooking tomato sauce that follows. This recipe for marinara includes lots of fresh basil, which I keep in the house at all times, now that it is available in local supermarkets year-round. I cook a whole basil stalk (or a handful of big sprigs with many leaves attached) submerged in the tomatoes to get all the herb flavor. Then I remove these and finish the sauce and pasta with fresh shredded leaves, giving it another layer of fresh-basil taste. (If you are freezing some of the sauce, by the way, you can wait until you’re cooking with it to add the fresh-basil garnish.) This sauce can be your base for cooking any fish fillet, chicken breast, pork fillet, or veal scaloppini. Sear any of these in a pan, add some marinara sauce, season with your favorite herbs, and let it perk for a few minutes—you’ll have yourself a good dish.

Corn is a nice addition to minestra—it adds texture and sweetness. It is also a good addition to other vegetable soups, such as fresh fennel, zucchini, or chicory and white bean.

Cook rice just before serving to get the consistency of soup you like: 1/4 cup of rice per quart of base for a lighter minestra, and up to 1/2 cup of rice for a hefty and hearty minestra.

Both lentils and pasta absorb liquid from the soup base, so add water from the beginning and more during cooking to get the consistency you like.

Try this with poached garlic purée too.

This soup is nice without the addition of garlic purée, marvelous with it. If you like, add short shreds of Savoy cabbage in place of some of the cauliflower, or make Savoy-cabbage soup with poached garlic purée instead.

You can make a cup or a gallon of delicious soup by cooking rice in the soup base: multiply or divide this formula as needed. If you like the lighter consistency, use 1/4 cup of uncooked rice per quart of base; for a denser soup, use 1/3 cup. Don’t start cooking the rice more than 15 minutes before serving, though, since the grains continue to expand and absorb broth even off the heat. Serve immediately after the rice is cooked.