Pasta salad is my absolute favorite summer picnic indulgence. But I wanted a twist to make it a memorable side dish, especially for a picnic potluck. Last year, I found an old Bon Appétit recipe that used an Asian-inspired base for the dressing: a mixture of sesame oil, honey, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and a kick of cayenne powder. I added a little mayonnaise into the sauce as a personal preference (what's a pasta salad without a hit of mayo?), and additional vegetables on hand. More

As much as I love the simplicity of homemade pesto with al dente pasta, I found myself with a piece of wild salmon and fresh peas the other day and set out to make it into dinner. While cream would be an obvious choice for saucing the pasta, I turned to yogurt instead, building off this previous Dinner Tonight recipe. Turns out the addition of pesto into the yogurt—which is thinned with a little vegetable stock and clings to the pasta beautifully—is an unexpected but wonderful twist. It adds a lovely tang and makes the dish just that much richer than pesto alone. More

Linguine with Fava Beans, Garlic, Tomato, and Bread Crumbs from The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual by Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo is less of a recipe and more of a template for incorporating spring and summer vegetables into a quick and very satisfying pasta. Fresh pasta is great in pretty much any preparation and when you match it with a perfect tomato sauce studded with freshly shelled beans it's pretty hard to beat. More

If you love cauliflower like I do, you'll definitely appreciate the nutty aroma. But it's really the anchovies and saffron that steal the show. Two tablespoons of anchovies may not sound like that much, but they imbue every forkful of this dish with a rich, fishy funk. If that weren't enough, the saffron confuses the palate, sending taste buds in all kids of odd directions. More

For as long as I've been eating at Frankies Spuntino, I've been trying to figure out what makes their Sweet Potato Ravioli in Cheese Broth so incredible. It's the one dish I order without fail, and I've been trying to uncover what sets these ravioli apart, aside from the fact that they use wonton wrappers instead of a more traditional (and labor intensive) pasta dough. It was the first recipe I looked up when getting my hands on a copy of The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion & Cooking Manual by Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo. There it was in the ingredients list—the secret was the Chinese five-spice powder. More

Quick-wilted baby spinach gives this quick-cooking pasta dish an earthy flavor, and a handful of walnuts are the crunch, while Parmesan brings it all back home. A simple dish, but one with an unexpected depth of flavor and a cooking time as long as it takes the pasta to finish. More

Where's the water? Check out the science behind this cooking method here. Note: Use a high quality ricotta cheese for this recipe. Check the ingredients label—it should contain nothing but milk, salt, and an acid or starter enzyme. Avoid any... More

There are many elements of this recipe from Gourmet that initially do not make sense, but two that immediately jumped out at me. First, let's talk about the lentils. I know the concept of adding a legume to a pasta dish doesn't sound like the best idea, but it works well with bucatini ai fagioli, and it worked here too. They provide an earthiness to the dish, and get lovingly stuck in the cups of the orecchiette. More

This recipe for Turkey-Spinach Lasagne from The Gloriously Gluten-Free Cookbook is one of the only recipes that I'll be sharing this week that calls for a gluten-free substitute—in this case the brown rice pasta. I was curious to see how it would compare texturally and flavor-wise to its semolina counterpart. More

Recipes that use bottarga are usually breathtakingly simple, letting the pungent fish flavor do most of the work. This recipe is no different. The sauce is nothing more than garlic, parsley, and red pepper flakes cooked for a minute in olive oil. It's all a frame to let the bottarga shine. A dusting of toasted almonds helps give the pasta a bit more texture, but it's still the developed funkiness of bottarga that makes this dish. More