Fettuccine

Do you need heavy cream to make fettuccine Alfredo? Debatable. Will it be delicious? Undeniable.

The key to this classic pesto recipe is to add the basil at the very end, instead of blending everything all at once—that way, the basil maintains its flavor and vibrant green color.

This simple pasta delivers big on bright summer flavor, and gives you a good excuse to work through some of that zucchini surplus.

Getting the consistency of the creamy mushroom sauce right is key for this pasta recipe—you want to reduce it just until it clings to the pasta.

Quick-cooking squid is perfect for a weeknight dinner. Look for it at a reputable fish monger or in your grocer's freezer section.

Puréeing beet greens into pesto and tossing asparagus ribbons with fettuccine is a great way to incorporate healthy vegetables into pasta.

Indulgent, seasonal, easy, and vegetarian—what more could you ask for?

Yogurt subs for heavy cream, so it's lowfat and only tastes splurgy.

Kabocha squash is made for purées.

Fettuccine Alfredo, with its ribbons of pasta coasted in a luxurious cheese sauce, is the very definition of decadent comfort. This recipe is all that—redefined. Zucchini ribbons mingle harmoniously with the noodles, allowing a big serving, healthfully. The sauce is made creamy with thickened milk but kept full flavored with plenty of real, fresh grated cheese.

Between the bacon (around 200mg of sodium per slice) and the scallops (over 330mg per 3 ounces), the classic dish is too salty for me to enjoy. But when the bacon is replaced with smoky zucchini ribbons and the scallops are swapped out for halibut rounds, you have a whimsical reinterpretation that actually tastes equally thrilling. I used smoked paprika and cumin to mimic the smoky fl avor of bacon and I decided to glaze the halibut rounds in honey and sugar to mimic the natural sweetness of scallops. The curry is purely for color and to balance the sweetness of the fish, and the spinach pasta lends a rich backdrop for the yellow-tinted "scallops."

The pork for this Southern-inspired pasta sauce is studded with garlic, which infuses the meat while it roasts.

This twist on pasta carbonara is sweet from leeks and rich thanks to cream (in place of eggs).

This recipe is part of the Epicurious Online Cooking School, in partnership with the Culinary Institute of America. To watch it being made, and to learn how to make other Italian classics, check out the videos.

Satisfy a hankering for high-fat Alfredo sauce with this light, no-dairy version. Oat milk and cashew butter stand in for heavy cream, keeping calories and saturated fat low.

My grandfather would occasionally make this for us as a special breakfast treat when I was young; now I serve it as an unusual first course for a fancy dinner or even, occasionally, for dessert. It’s very unexpected—and very delicious. Serve it in small portions, as it is quite rich.

Fettuccine carbonara is a typical weeknight meal for many Italians, and I love it, too. I couldn’t resist adding an extra layer of flavor to this classic dish to improve on something that is already great. I know the sweet-salty combination of bacon with cinnamon sounds odd, but the flavors are extraordinary together. Try it; you’ll see.

Sugo is the Italian word for any kind of sauce. This particular sugo isn’t cooked long enough for the tomato chunks to break down completely. Cut the tomatoes into any size pieces you prefer, just as you would for a salsa. If you like it chunky, keep the pieces on the larger side so they won’t break up too much when you stir the sauce. Because it is such a basic, straightforward sauce, it will be a good match to all kinds of flavored pastas, like whole wheat or spinach.

This is a typically Italian way of preparing chicken, but Italians rarely combine chicken with pasta; by serving chicken over wide ribbons of fettuccine I’ve created a hybrid Italian-American one-dish meal.

You can make this kind of soup anytime, using any kind of pasta you like. Small shapes and short noodles are the obvious choices, but my parents often added spaghetti or fettuccine, broken into small pieces so we could still eat it with a spoon. The fettuccine looks a little more elegant, but if all you have on hand is spaghetti, that’s fine; the soup will have a more rustic, homey look.