Orecchiette with spicy turkey sausage and broccoli rabe. I know—turkey sausage? But the stuff from DiPaola has great flavor and doesn’t get quite as dried out as what you get from the store; it’s actually really good. Plus, it’s good for you or something. Regardless, sausage and broccoli rabe is a classic combination served in restaurants around the northeast. Starting with spicy sausage and adding a bit of red sauce makes it that much more satisfying in my book.

This is easy to make. Brown the sausage then add your red sauce. While that simmers, blanch the broccoli rabe, then drain and squeeze against the walls of the colander or paper towels. Add the cooked orecchiette and broccoli rabe to the sauce, stirring for one more minute. Serve with your preferred grated cheese.

Goat cheese agnolotti with maitake mushrooms. The theme since Thanksgiving (I cooked elsewhere this year so no posts—sorry!) has been simplicity. Luckily in NYC we have access to such incredible ingredients that simple can still mean delicious. Yesterday, I stopped by Eataly and picked up these great looking agnolotti and mushrooms. Maitake have such an exquisite flavor that (in my opinion) they do best when prepared quickly and simply. Here, I quickly sautéed them (4-5 minutes over medium heat), added a bit of base tomato sauce and brought to a simmer, then tossed with the finished agnolotti. 20 Minutes start to finish including boiling water.

Penne with pancetta, shitake and hen of the woods mushrooms, ricotta and a basil chiffonade. This is a really simple and delicious dish that tastes much better than it looks (I promise). The mushrooms from a Union Square Greenmarket vendor were especially good. This was made by following my standard ricotta-based pasta dish method, with the additional step of browning the mushrooms and piling on a bit of basil. 

Fettuccine with scallops and pesto. High quality scallops from Blue Moon Fish with really good pesto and fresh fettuccine make for an easy but great meal.

Penne with Pancetta, Ricotta, and “four lilies.” Experimentation and fun with Ricotta-based sauces continue. A while ago, Babbo and Mario Batali turned me onto cooking with “five lilies”, which means including five types of onion (apparently the onion genus Allium is related to lilies?). The different flavors that come from the variety of onions and preps—caramelized, sauteed, simply heated through, and fresh—is really nice. Here I used only four—caramelized red onion, spring green onions and garlic added to the pan with a couple of minutes to go, and finished with chives. Lilies aside, the method was the same as this recipe. Which dish is better depends mostly on how much you like asparagus and onions.

Penne con Ricotta, Pancetta, e Asparagi. Or Penne with a ricotta, pancetta, and asparagus sauce. The New Jersey asparagus are so good right now, I just keep loading up on them. This time, I also picked up some fresh penne, fresh ricotta, and pancetta from Di Palo’s, New York’s Italian food source mecca. Unfortunately, I went to Di Palo’s on a Saturday afternoon, so I was battling it out for a place at the counter with about 30 clones of my Italian grandmother, but their ricotta is worth the wait. Anyway, here’s the recipe for the pasta:

While the water boils and pasta cooks, cook the pancetta (roughly chopped) in a 14-inch skillet.  Just before the pancetta browns, add peeled asparagus cut into pieces about the size of the penne. Cook until asparagus is done to your liking and pancetta is browned and remove the pan from heat. If you’ve time it right, just dump the cooked pasta into the pan (reserving a couple cups of pasta water). If not, remove the pancetta and asparagus from the pan until your ready to combine everything so as not to overcook it. Once you have penne, asparagus, and pancetta combined, add 10 ounces or so of ricotta, freshly ground black pepper, and however much pasta water it takes to get the sauce to a consistency you like. Grate some good quality grana padano (or whatever you like to grate) over the pasta and serve.

Wine: I would go with a full bodied white, preferably one with at least some acidity. I chose a bizarre Italian white made by nuns that worked surprisingly well.