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

Gnudi Toscani di Ricotta e Spinaci al Burro e Salvia (Italian Tuscan Ricotta and Spinach Gnudi with Brown Butter and Sage) Gnudi are what happens when a Tuscan cook decides the pasta was never the point. The filling of ravioli, ricotta and spinach bound with egg and grated cheese, is rolled into small spheres, turned in semolina and dropped straight into boiling water with nothing wrapped around it. They come to the table in brown butter and sage and they should be so soft th

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,