Tortelli di Zucca Ferraresi (Italian Ferrara Pumpkin Tortelli) Tortelli di zucca are the Ferrara answer to a vegetable that arrived from the Americas and never left. Inside a thin sheet of egg pasta sits roasted pumpkin, aged Parmigiano, crumbled dry amaretti and nutmeg: a filling that reads sweet, salty and faintly bitter in one mouthful. Butter and sage carry it, and nothing else belongs. The dish stands or falls on how the pumpkin is cooked, hours before the pasta is rolle

Fileja con 'Nduja e Ricotta Affumicata (Calabrian Hand Rolled Pasta with Nduja and Smoked Ricotta) This is the Calabrian plate that works by subtraction. No tomato, no cream, no herbs: a spoonful of 'nduja, good olive oil, the starch of freshly rolled fileja, and aged smoked ricotta grated over the top in the last second. Everything depends on the tension between two preserved products. The fat of the sausage arrives hot and fermented, the smoke of the cheese dry and saline,

Gnocchi Sardi alla Campidanese (Sardinian Malloreddus alla Campidanese) Malloreddus alla Campidanese is the Sunday pasta of the Campidano, the wheat plain running from Cagliari north towards Oristano. Ridged semolina gnocchetti, a long cooked sausage and tomato sugo, saffron from the fields around San Gavino Monreale, a heavy fall of pecorino sardo. No cream, no butter, no herbs: four Sardinian ingredients and the patience to cook them. Yield: 4 main course servings. Prep: 50