Cheese

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.

Oltranti gives this dish a velvety finish with Franklin's Teleme, a soft, tangy cheese made in Northern California. If you can't find it, use a combination of mascarpone and Parmigiano-Reggiano.

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.

Miraglia Eriquez's Aunt Dottie loved this indulgent appetizer, which was served at her favorite Italian-American restaurants. A talented, ambitious home cook, Dottie tinkered in her kitchen until she came up with her own version. We're glad she did. The lemon and capers in the anchovy-butter sauce cut through the richness of soft, stretchy mozzarella in a pocket of crisp fried bread.

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.

The airy ricotta filling—with chocolate chips and flecks of candied orange peel speckled throughout—makes for a perfect marriage of Italian and American.

Gael Greene shared these recipes with Epicurious from her new book, Insatiable. To learn more about Greene, read our Q&A. This is a recipe from my young bride days, before cholesterol was a health concern. But I believe holidays are the perfect excuse for excess. If you serve sixteen with this recipe, you'll feel half as guilty. I did four of these for Craig Claiborne's riotous sixty-seventh birthday party, where so many great chefs cooked that few guests even noticed my effort.

No need to open a bottle of white wine for the few tablespoons you'd require: Lemon brightens up this easy risotto.

A tender, short crust is filled with a creamy orange-scented ricotta custard. Served with hot espresso, these little pastries are a wonderful way to end a big meal.

Jazz up your winter repertoire with a tangy, colorful pomegranate dressing that melds fennel and oranges with salty Pecorino

In this quick version of a common Puglian dish, pungent garlic and spicy red-pepper flakes turn frozen broccoli into a perfect partner for ear-shaped pasta.

Sweet nibbles of butternut squash temper the bitter edge of radicchio in every bite of this healthful, satisfying pasta.

This refreshing salad serves as a palate cleanser before dessert. Oltranti updates a traditional Italian-style salad dressing with the modern flavors of California cuisine: Floral Meyer lemon amplifies the acidity of red-wine vinegar in a bright shallot vinaigrette.

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.