Canned Tomato

This Greek-inspired shepherd's pie is made with lamb, eggplant, and oregano. The mashed potato topping gets its Greek flavor from kasseri cheese, a hard, salty cheese. If you can't find kasseri cheese, use Pecorino Romano instead. Finish the dish with a sprinkling of chopped fresh oregano, if desired.

The Abruzzese of Italy love hot peppers and delight in food that has a bit of a kick. In this rich pork stew, called spezzantino dimaiale alla'abruzzese, red bell peppers add sweetness and balance the heat. Some versions of this recipe use chopped rosemary instead of fennel seed.

Tender veal shanks get great depth of flavor from lecsó, a kind of Hungarian sofrito of sautéed onions, frying peppers, and tomatoes, to which paprika and, in this case, stock are added. (Grimes found that Cubanelle peppers are the best substitute for the long, yellowish-green peppers found throughout Hungary.) Finished with sour cream, the sauce yields more than you need, but you'll be happy to have leftovers to serve over noodles, chicken, or pork.

This soup has many layers in its complexity, but the overall effect is of cleanness and freshness. An optional addition of jasmine rice makes a heartier meal.

We added nuggets of steak to a restorative soup of egg noodles and vegetables, turning it into hot, hearty magic that would warm up Old Man Winter himself.

"It's time for a little history lesson. Listen well. Some say that the word jambalaya came from the French word jambon for ham, the African ya meaning rice, and the Acadian phrase à la. And you must understand that there are brown jambalaya's, made by caramelizing and browning the onions and meats, and red ones, made by adding tomatoes. There are as many recipes for jambalaya as there are for gumbos in Louisiana. Personally, I like a bit of tomatoes in mine; I think it gives it a nice flavor. But I'll let you taste, and then you can make up your own mind," Eula Mae says. Jambalaya is also one of those popular Louisiana dishes that are very apropros for dining on the water. It's a one-pot meal, but you can serve it with a nice green salad and French bread. When you're browning the chicken and ham, scrape the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. That gives the jambalaya a good flavor.

The secret to a great pizza Margherita is to use the best ingredients you can find—and to approach them with restraint. (Just because a little cheese is good doesn't mean a lot will be better!) We always start with our all-time favorite pizza dough, adapted from chef Chris Bianco, of Pizzeria Bianco, in Phoenix. This slightly wet dough, in conjunction with a hot pizza stone, produces a crisp yet chewy crust, the perfect canvas for bright homemade tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, and verdant basil leaves.

Chicken cacciatore is a ubiquitous dish in Italian-American restaurants, but we think it is even more delicious when made with veal shoulder roast. Slowly braising the meat in a heady tomato sauce enriched with pancetta, olives, and porcini produces a dish so good, you'll find yourself sneaking nibbles all the way to the table. It's even better the next day—if you can contain yourself.

In the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, lasagne bolognese is usually made with a besciamella sauce. Italian-American cooks often replace that time-consuming step with ricotta. In this wickedly good interpretation, food editor Melissa Roberts combines the two traditions by whisking milk into some of the ricotta, creating a billowy pseudo-besciamella (the remaining ricotta mixture is stirred together with spinach). We rarely call for specific brands, but we did find that widely available Barilla no-boil dried noodles produced an exemplary lasagne. An egg pasta, this one comes very close to the flavor and delicacy of homemade.

Patience is the key to this soul-satisfying soup chock-full of winter greens. Its depth of flavor comes from cooking the soffritto—a mixture of pancetta, onion, celery, carrots, and the ribs from the chard—for a good 45 minutes and from browning the tomato paste. The result is so savory that there's no need for broth; water, canned tomatoes, and a parmesan rind work beautifully. And because this soup must cook slowly, don't worry about prepping all your vegetables before you begin—you can simply chop as you go.

This garlicky, simple seafood dish was once served in a coccio (a traditional clay pot).

A savory soup with ginger, saffron, and curry.

In the waste-not mentality of Italian cucina povera, panfried patties made with eggs and bread crumbs are a great use for leftover eggplant parmigiana ingredients. In fact, the patties are so incredibly delicious that we made them the crisp showstoppers in this fun reconstruction.

This bottomless bowl of meat sauce is the stuff of dreams—the American Dream, in particular. In Italy, ragù would have been flavored with a small piece of pork, but because meat was so readily available in the United States, immigrants included beef braciole, meatballs, sweet and hot sausage, and pork shoulder and ribs. This dish requires hours on the stovetop to make the meat tender and juicy and the sauce thick and intense, but it's well worth waiting for.

Wake up your taste buds with this lowfat recipe. It is sure to satisfy — and provide a spicy kick!

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from I Like Food, Food Tastes Good: In the Kitchen with Your Favorite Bands by Kara Zuaro. The Violent Femmes
from Brian Ritchie If adolescence had an official soundtrack, it would be provided by the Violent Femmes. They're not quite indie rock, but if you haven't got their self-titled debut CD in your neatly alphabetized record collection, nestled somewhere between the Velvet Teen and Weezer, then your roommate must have stolen it. Brian Ritchie's acoustic bass line has no doubt rocked your teenage dance parties, and now he's going to up the ante at your next dinner soirée. "My strategy is to eat food at a restaurant and then try to guess how they made it. Then I add my own ideas," Brian explains. "I used to live in Italy, and this is my version of something I had in Florence. This recipe is as good as what you'd get there." I picked up some wild boar from New York's Citarella Fine Foods, but I had to place an order a few days in advance, and the smallest amount they would sell me was a whopping five pounds of meat. Fortunately, this deeply flavorful stew is something I'll be happy to make again (half the boar is still in my freezer) — but if you don't have easy access to wild boar, try another type of meat, as Brian suggests below. "Ragù is a winter dish characterized by meat and tomatoes. It is traditional to cook it all day, adding more liquid if it starts to dry out. Italians use fresh tomatoes in the summer and canned in winter. "Making a ragù is like playing jazz. You have to be creative, tasteful, and able to adapt to the circumstances. The beauty of ragù is that everybody is free to develop their own. Aside from meat and tomatoes, you can basically add whichever other spices and ingredients appeal to you. If you don't want wild boar, substitute any other meat you like — lamb, pork, veal, beef, or venison. I have made this dish with all of those depending on availability and what looks good at the butcher. "Note: I do not use a recipe or exact quantities when I cook. These quantities are just to give you a rough idea. Adjust to your own taste." —Brian Ritchie

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from Jamie Oliver's book Jamie's Italy. Pasta con acchiughe e pomodoro This is a poor people's pasta from Palermo in Sicily. You could use tagliatelle or spaghetti, but if you can find margherita pasta it's great — it looks thicker than spaghetti, and it's frilly down one edge. This sauce has great flavor and is very Sicilian with the raisins and pine nuts. P.S., I'd like to thank my mate John Hamilton, the incredible art director on this book, who made this dish with me in Sicily. He made it with such care and concentrated so hard staring at it that I thought it might turn to stone! As you can see from the picture, it goes to show that even a Glaswegian geezer can produce a pretty and delicate dish.