Penne Without the Vodka

This marinara sauce is great tossed with any pasta for a quick and easy weeknight dinner that will leave you thinking, “Why didn’t anyone try this sooner?”

An ex-boyfriend’s mom—who emigrated from Colombia—made the best meat sauce—she would fry sofrito for the base and simply add cooked ground beef, sazón, and jarred tomato sauce. My version is a bit more bougie—it calls for caramelized tomato paste and white wine—but the result is just as good.

This pasta has some really big energy about it. It’s so extra, it’s the type of thing you should be eating in your bikini while drinking a magnum of rosé, not in Hebden Bridge (or wherever you live), but on a beach on Mykonos.

In this lasagna, soft layers of pasta and béchamel are interspersed with a rich tomato sauce laden with hearty Mediterranean vegetables.

This is what I call a fridge-eater recipe. The key here is getting a nice sear on the sausage and cooking the tomato down until it coats the sausage and vegetables well.

This is what I call a fridge-eater recipe. The key here is getting a nice sear on the sausage and cooking the tomato down until it coats the sausage and vegetables well.

Cabbage is the unsung hero of the winter kitchen—available anywhere, long-lasting in the fridge, and super-affordable. It’s also an excellent partner for pasta.

This sauce is slightly magical. The texture cloaks pasta much like a traditional meat sauce does, and the flavors are deep and rich, but it’s actually vegan!