Italian Recipes

I have spent more time eating in Emilia-Romagna than anywhere else on earth, and I still don’t think I’ve gotten to the bottom of it. Bologna is the kind of city where a woman named Anna will hand you a rolling pin, tell you your pasta is too thick, and change how you cook forever. That’s roughly what happened to me.

Italian food gets flattened in translation. It arrives in America as red sauce and garlic bread, and the real thing turns out to be quieter and far more regional than that. Bologna and Naples might as well be different countries at the table. What holds across all of it is restraint: a handful of ingredients, chosen carefully, and the confidence to leave them alone.

These are the recipes I brought home from Italy. Some came from cooking classes in Emilia-Romagna, some from chefs patient enough to explain what they were doing while they did it, and some from eating the same dish in six places until I understood what made the good ones good.

A few things worth knowing. Pasta shape is functional, not decorative, and it’s chosen to hold a particular sauce, which is why tagliatelle and not spaghetti goes with ragù. Good Italian cooking uses fewer ingredients than most American recipes, so quality matters more than quantity. Coffee follows rules that have nothing to do with taste and everything to do with time of day. And there is no such thing as spaghetti Bolognese in Bologna.

If you’re new here, make the Tagliatelle al Ragù when you have an afternoon and want to understand what the fuss is about. Or make the Affogato when you have four minutes and want a little something sweet that tastes like Italy.

Planning a trip rather than dinner? Scroll down. I’ve collected everything I’ve written about eating your way through Italy at the bottom of this page.

Eating Your Way Through Italy

Italy is where I stopped separating the food from the place. You eat the tortellini in Bologna and then pass a shop window full of it on the walk back to the hotel. Or you go to a restaurant in Modena, and the owner invites you back to see the family’s balsamic in a battery of barrels. And you can never, ever have too much gelato.

These are the trips behind the recipes above. Some of them will tell you where to eat, and some of them will just make you want to go.