Herbs & Spices

Serve with steamed broccoli or cauliflower.

My favorite ginger-lime chicken was had at a bistro in Montreal, Canada, of all places. This is the at-home version.

This dish is fast and healthy and incorporates a favorite Sicilian combo: oranges, red onions, and oregano.

When I worked at Macy’s Marketplace in New York City years ago, we had a huge Italian import sale in honor of Columbus Day weekend. As part of the promotion, we handed out cookbooks entitled Columbus’s Menu, given to us by the Italian Trade Commission. The book listed adaptations of recipes as old as Columbus sailing the ocean blue. One of my favorites was a roast pork loin with balsamic- and basil-macerated strawberries. Here’s how you can make it in less than 30. Serve with salad and crusty bread.

Serve with a green salad.

A pretty basic version to get you started.

This meal is a lazy-man’s version of paella. (But we lazy, big-mouthed, big-appetite girls can dispatch this dinner pretty easily, too!)

This dish can be made 100 ways. It’s one of the first dishes you eat as an Italian kid: macaroni with butter and ricotta cheese. Once you grow up, you add stuff in, but the base remains the same. I’ll try to limit myself and just give you my top five versions.