When it comes to sauce making, Lahey keeps it simple, as in really simple. His Basic Tomato Sauce is nothing more than tomatoes crushed and blended with a bit of salt and olive oil. No cooking, no herbs, no garlic, just tomatoes. He gives two options for tomatoes: canned or fresh. We'd go with a good can of San Marzanos until July rolls around since they're the ones that are going to pack the sweetest, tomato-iest punch. More

The main concept behind the sauce is the addition of vodka brings out flavors in the tomatoes that are alcohol soluble, leaving a spicy, acidic mixture that is tempered with heavy cream to create a rich and vibrant sauce in the end. More

While bacon, pancetta, guanciale, and all sorts of sausage make their way into all sorts of pasta dishes, somehow salami is always left on the antipasto plate. And it's kind of a shame considering salami's incredible ability to add intensely porky flavors to a simple tomato sauce. This Farro Pasta with Spicy Salami Tomato Sauce and Fresh Mint from Melissa Clark's Cook This Now highlights salami's sauce-boosting qualities by rendering batons of spicy sopressata golden and crisp. More

This recipe is perfect for this time of year: it takes advantage of the plentiful and cheap late-season fresh tomatoes, but cooks them down into a sauce where texture is no longer an issue. More

Before coming across this lovely plate of Maccheroni alla Chitarra with Ragù Abruzzese and Palottine that graces the cover of Domenica Marchetti's The Glorious Pasta of Italy, I'd always thought that spaghetti and meatballs was strictly checkered tablecloth territory, an Italian-American dish with very distant (if any) ties to Italian cookery. As it turns out, this Italian cousin of our beloved spaghetti and meatballs is quite the popular dish in Abruzzo. More

The recipe is a three-parter, beginning with Ragù all'Abruzzese, a slow cooking tomato sauce that's simmered with three types of meat, beef, lamb, and pork that enrich the sauce with all sorts of lovely meaty, fatty notes. The curious thing about this particular ragù is that the meat is removed before serving so that it can be used in another dish such as filling for cannelloni or tortellini. More

This Michael Symon recipe from Live to Cook is the kind of pasta dish I adore. Namely because the sauce is cooked quickly, using a mix of fresh, in-season produce and salty cured products. When the pasta is done cooking, it's tossed right into the pan with the sauce, so that each bite is coated with the flavorful mixture. It actually comes off something like a mix between a funky puttanesca and a fiery all'amatriciana. More

Italian cooking and ginger are two things I've never seen cross paths before. I'm sure there's some region in Italy where it's popular, but I think it's safe to say that the majority of Italian cuisine pays little attention to it. Hence my curiosity after seeing this recipe from Viana La Place, half the duo behind Cucinia Rustica and other classic Italian cookbooks. Considering her pedigree, I knew this wasn't some reckless experiment. Ginger in a tomato sauce was done for a reason. More

One of my favorite ways to rethink tomato sauce is the classic alla puttanesca rendition, where the tomatoes are fortified with capers, olives, and pungent anchovies. This recipe from Naples, from Nancy Harmon Jenkins' exhaustive tome of Southern Italian cooking Cucina del Sole, is reminiscent of puttanesca, but with the sweet and nutty addition of raisins and pine nuts. It can be tossed with pasta or served with a piece of fish. More

This creates a slightly sweet, intense tomato sauce typical of New York-style slices. It's also good served with pasta. Read more about the science behind the recipe here.... More