Easy Italian recipes

Mixed Pasta with Basil Pesto and Tuna
Mixed Pasta with Basil Pesto and Tuna

Mixed Pasta with Basil Pesto and Tuna excerpted from Eat Like a Sardinian: Live to 100 by Francesco Mattana. Photography © Dave Brown 2026.

Eat Like a Sardinian: Live to 100 by Francesco Mattana

“More than just a cookbook – it’s a love letter to Sardinia” – Jamie Oliver

An exciting debut cookbook from a rising star in the world of Italian cooking!

Sardinia captures the true spirit of Mediterranean cooking. Here, you find a way of life filled with simple, fresh, seasonal ingredients, healthy fats and plenty of time spent cooking, eating and spending time with loved ones. Sardinia is, after all, one of only five designated “blue zones” in the world – where people live longer than anywhere else.

In Eat Like a Sardinian, chef Francesco Mattana invites you to discover the rich and varied food culture of the island, bringing together his experiences learning to cook from the women around him and years of teaching at Jamie Oliver’s Cookery School to create authentic, delicious home cooking recipes that everyone can master, with all the tips and tricks needed to get them right every time. Find the perfect small bite for your aperitivo hour, stock up your pantry with preserves, perfect your pasta and bread-making skills, learn how to entertain the Sardinian way with impressive fish, meat and vegetable dishes and finish it all off with a traditional dolci. Who knew healthy living could be so sweet?

Recipes include Francesco’s viral spaghetti al pomodoro, Italian lemon tart, roasted lamb with artichokes and potatoes, bruschetta with figs, and the “live to 100” minestrone.

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Tomato-Olive Focaccia
Tomato-Olive Focaccia

Tomato-Olive Focaccia excerpted from MILK STREET BACKROADS ITALY by Christopher Kimball and J.M. Hirsch. Copyright © 2025 by CPK Media, LLC. Photograph by Connie Miller.

MILK STREET BACKROADS ITALY by Christopher Kimball and J.M. Hirsch. Copyright © 2025 by CPK Media, LLC.Discover the real techniques, ingredients, and stories behind the Italian dishes you know and love—and the ones you’ve yet to try—with more than 145 delicious recipes that bring simplicity back to Italian cooking, from the James Beard Award-winning team at Milk Street. 

Forget everything you thought you knew about Italian food. In Italy, cooks throw away their garlic, they don’t stir their polenta, and they never labour over pans of risotto. But they do make enormous meatballs that are tender and light, and they occasionally break all the rules when making pasta.

The editors at Milk Street have spent years scouring small eateries, local markets, farms and home kitchens from Lombardy to Calabria and from Sardinia to Sicily in search of fresh takes on classic recipes as well as little-known regional favourites that never crossed the Atlantic.

On our travels we found new ways with pasta, from foolproof cacio e pepe in Rome to Puglia’s olive oil—crisped fettuccine with chickpeas and a lemony pesto from Amalfi, where the pasta itself is enriched with citrus. Plus some surprising tomato sauces, including spaghetti all’assassina from Bari—spicy, charred, and made in one skillet. (more…)

Meatballs in Tomato Sauce
Meatballs in Tomato Sauce, Gregg's Italian Family Cookbook, Gregg and Anna Wallace, Photography by James Murphy

Meatballs in Tomato Sauce, Gregg’s Italian Family Cookbook, Gregg and Anna Wallace, Photography by James Murphy

Gregg Wallace has fallen in love with Italian cuisine. Along with his wife Anna, and a little help from her Italian parents, he has created a simple Italian cookbook so we can all enjoy traditional Italian cuisine at home.

For Italians, food is not just about recipes, it’s a way of life. It’s about making time for each other, forgetting work and worries, and enjoying tasty, satisfying meals. Gregg and Anna share the dishes they have explored, laughed and argued about with their family, from vitello tonnato to orecchiette and crespelle to veal chops, bagna cauda and bowls of vongole. Brought to life through stunning photography in the Tuscan countryside and buzzing food markets, you’ll discover traditional recipes, cooked the authentic Italian way.

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Six-Foot Sub Baguettes
Six-Foot Sub Baguettes

Photography by Linda Pugliese

The Executive Editor of SAVEUR magazine, author Stacy Adimando draws from her Italian heritage and her love of Italy’s traditional abundant antipasti spreads to create 75 recipes for easy, generous plates and platters meant for grazing and sharing.

Organized by season and ranging in size from bites—such as Stuffed Mussels with Bacon and Garlic Breadcrumbs, Baby Root Vegetables with Vinaigrette, and Prosciutto and Pecorino Biscuits—to larger platters, like Baked Squash with Chile Oil and Crispy Seeds, Thinly Sliced Tuscan Pork Loin, and White Clam Pizzas with Scallion and Bacon, these are generous dishes to serve to family and friends for gatherings of any kind. (more…)

Cookbook Review: Rao’s Classics

Rao’s is the legendary, tiny corner restaurant in East Harlem where it’s impossible to book a table: each of the red-checked, cloth-covered four-, six-, and two-tops is reserved for a titan of New York industry, a celebrity, or a major politician. Permanently. Now Frank Pellegrino, the third generation of his family to operate the impossible-to-get-into Rao’s restaurant in East Harlem and founder of Rao’s food products line, goes deep into the history of his family, the restaurant, and America’s love affair with Southern Italian cooking to create Rao’s Classics cookbook.
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Book Review: Pasta by Hand

It never occurred to me that I could make pasta the old-fashioned way—by hand. I mean, who does that? I always thought that task was relegated to old-world Nonna’s. And let’s be honest, Italian cooking is intimidating. For me, it’s fraught with peril. My fear of bungling a centuries-old cuisine is very real.

Along comes Pasta by Hand: A collection of Italy’s regional and hand shaped pasta. The fact that no special equipment or ingredients are needed to form pasta shapes chips away at my list of excuses. The book contains more than 65 recipes for homemade pasta dough and easy instructions on how to shape it into small orbs, cups, twists, shells, noodles, and dumplings.

Ms. Louis has spent what seems like infinite hours of research and travel schooling herself on the humble dumpling, or what Italians call gnocchi. The book begins with a section on ‘The Basics.’ Exactly what I need. The pages outline the specific ingredients, tools, and techniques that will help craft dumplings, as well as a list of 12 tips for making great gnocchi. For example, ‘Tip #4’ instructs us to pay special attention to the mixing and cooking directions for each recipe. The mixing method for each dumpling dough will be different, to achieve the correct texture. Not all dumplings are meant to be tender and light.

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