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I’ve been trying to eat as seasonally as possible, and to always ask my local vendors “What’s good today?” At a recent trip to a favorite local cheese shop, the staff mentioned enthusiastically that it was “a perfect time of year for goat cheese.” So goat cheese has been on my mind, and I’ve been inspired to go along with the season.

One of the nicest ways to enjoy goat cheese is with a good, fresh pear, so I have been eagerly scouting the markets, hoping to find that perfect piece of complementary fruit. However, while it may be a great time of year for goat cheese, it seems the pears aren’t on quite the same schedule. The pears at my neighborhood supermarkets have been a little on the hard side recently—they may look great in the produce display, but are often just a little too firm to eat right away. At least, not without a little help—roasting them in the oven is an easy way to soften them and bring out additional flavor as well.

For a quick one-dish meal at home, I combined some crumbled goat cheese with roasted pears, walnuts (left over from trying Guilherme’s awesome ricotta walnut pasta recipe recently), a couple of handfuls of greens and penne pasta. This is wonderful served warm, or as a cold salad the next day. Enjoy!

Penne with Roasted Pear, Goat Cheese and Walnuts

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

• 8 oz. pasta, such as penne
• 2 Bosc pears, ripe but firm (firmer varieties of pears work best)
• 1 tablespoon plus 3 1/2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• Juice of half a lemon
• 1/2 cup baby arugula (rocket)
• 1/2 cup baby spinach
• 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese
• Pinch of sea salt

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425° F. Slice the pear into thin wedges, leaving the skin on and removing the center core. Toss with one tablespoon of olive oil, coating lightly, then place in baking dish and roast in oven for 10 minutes. Remove from oven, stir again, and return to oven for an additional 5 minutes. Allow to cool, then cut into smaller bite sized pieces.

Mix together the remaining 3 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil with the balsamic vinegar and lemon juice. Cook penne according to package directions. Drain pasta and mix in the olive oil-vinegar-lemon juice mixture, then mix in the chopped pears, arugula and baby spinach. If desired, add a little sea salt to taste. Divide among plates and top with crumbled goat cheese and chopped walnut pieces.

Option: Skip the pasta and just serve with extra greens as a salad.

If you find that spinach and ricotta are two ingredients I used together recently, then you are right. Anna is still away and in the meantime, I’m still more economic with the time I spend in kitchen, so I’ve been improving my ability to make gourmet dishes quickly and for a single person.

Since more often than not I have the versatile spinach and ricotta pate in the refrigerator, here is a dish I came up with this week: a delicious spinach and ricotta lasagna with bechamel sauce and topped with cheese.

Ingredients

• Sheets of pasta for lasagna
• The Versatile spinach and ricotta pâté
• 300ml (7 floz) of milk
• 100g (3.5oz) of grated Parmesan
• 1 tablespoon of flour
• A hint of nutmeg

Directions for the bechamel sauce

• Dissolve the flour in the cold milk
• Add the nutmeg
• Cook over a low heat, mixing gently until it starts to thicken
• Remove from heat immediately

Directions for the lasagna

There isn’t really a rule of how many layers of lasagna or how much filling you should have, but I used 7 layers of lasagna and used a layer of filling of about 3mm (0.1in), but feel free to choose your own measurements.

• Spread a thin layer of the sauce on the bottom of the tray
• Spread the Spinach and Ricotta pâté on a layer of lasagna
• Position the layer on the tray, over the sauce
• Add a thin layer of the bechamel sauce
• Repeat the process until you’re done with the layers
• Cover generously with the sauce and make sure also the sides are covered
• Spread the grated cheese over the top and cook in a preheated oven at 200°C (390°F) for about 25 minutes

Now, the final secret. Lasagna cooks much better in a baking dish made of terracotta or other material that allows a slow cooking than a metal one.

I don’t know about you, but to me cooking has always had a social factor.

When I cook for people here in Italy I can spend hours in the kitchen doing things as complex as they can be. I can actually go through all the Italian courses — Primo piatto, secondo piatto, contorno, dolce, and I can bake my own bread to go along with it. But when I cook only for myself I tend to be more economic with the time I spend in kitchen. But, hey, I never meant to say I lower my food standards in any measure!

Since Anna is away and I’m by myself this week, in this post I’ll share a recipe that won’t take more than 10 minutes of your time and requires no skills at all, yet is the kind of food you find in fancy restaurants, and often at unjustified prices.

Got ten minutes to prepare today’s lunch? Let’s go then!

Penne Rigate alla Ricotta e Noci

The first thing to do, of course, is give the dish a fancy Italian name, like they do in restaurants. Penne Rigate alla Ricotta e Noci — so there you go. Penne are those small pipes of pasta and rigate means they are ridged on the surface.

This was my pasta of choice because I wanted the ricotta to be able to fill the penne and because of the rough surface it will adhere better on the outside as well, but you can use other varieties of penne, or fusili. Basically any short pasta.

Ingredients

• 200g (7 oz) of penne rigate, or your pasta of choice
• 150g (5 oz) of ricotta
• 30g (1 oz) of chopped walnuts
• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Directions

• Cook the pasta in lightly salted water according to instructions on the package
• When the penne are done, drain, and immediately put them back in the same empty pan
• Add the ricotta and the olive oil and mix them gently
• Add the walnuts
• Optionally, if you like a stronger taste, you can add a some strong cheese, like a small piece of gorgonzola or ground pecorino or parmesan.

This recipe serves two, but another great thing is that just as simply you can cook for yourself alone or you can cook for a dozen — you will only need a bigger pan.

I like to spend a couple of hours on the weekend preparing a few food basics that, once made, take the hard work out of cooking meals for the week ahead — a strategy I refer to as ‘weekend cooking for weekday eating’. In addition to curries and soups I invariably make some kind of tomato-based Mediterranean sauce for its sheer versatility.

Apart from a classic bolognese sauce or a piquant puttanesca sauce, one of our favorites is this rich sauce made with a medley of vibrant red ingredients including tomatoes, roasted red peppers, red onions, red wine, and red chili. I really enjoy the process of making up batches of this sauce, it brings out the Italian mama in me, especially when I put on Italian opera while I’m cooking.

Producing my own homemade sauce rather than buying the store-bought stuff in jars gives me a feeling of self-sufficiency, and it’s healthier and cheaper as well. Just knowing that I’ve got a supply of this delicious and nutritious sauce on hand fills me with a real sense of satisfaction. Over the past week we’ve had this sauce drizzled over grilled fish on a simple couscous salad, and then a couple of nights later tossed with rigatoni, broccoli and canned tuna as a quick pasta meal.

The sauce can be stored in the fridge, covered for up to 3 days, or in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Robust red sauce

Serves 4 (or enough to make the following 2 meals, each serving 2 people)

• 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 red onions — diced
• 4 cloves garlic — finely chopped
• 28 oz (840g) canned tomatoes — chopped
• ½ cup red wine
• ½ teaspoon dried rosemary
• ½ teaspoon dried red chili flakes
• 1½ teaspoons salt
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• ½ teaspoon sugar
• 4 red bell peppers — deseeded and quartered

HEAT the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and cook the onions for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and cook for another 5 minutes, stirring regularly. ADD the tomatoes, wine, rosemary, chili flakes, salt, pepper and sugar and bring to the boil. COVER, reduce the heat to medium and cook for 20 minutes. WHILE the sauce simmers, place the peppers (skin side up) under a hot broiler (griller) until the skin blackens all over, about 10 minutes. REMOVE and cover the charred peppers with a clean dishcloth or plastic wrap for 5 minutes to allow the steam to loosen the skins from the pepper flesh. PEEL off the blackened skin from the peppers and roughly cut the flesh into pieces then add to the sauce. PLACE the sauce into a food processor or blender and process until smooth.

Grilled fish with robust red sauce and couscous salad

Serves 2

• 4 tablespoons lemon juice
• 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cloves garlic — minced
• 2 x 6 oz (180g) firm white fish fillets
• 1 cup couscous
• 2 small zucchini — quartered lengthways and very thinly sliced into quarters
• 1¼ cups boiling chicken or vegetable stock
• 1 scallion (green part only) — thinly sliced on diagonal
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh mint
• 2 oz (60g) crumbled feta
• ½ portion of the Robust Red Sauce recipe — heated

MIX together the lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic in a bowl. POUR half the lemon/oil mixture over the fish fillets and marinate, covered, in the fridge for 1 hour. COMBINE the couscous and zucchini in a bowl, pour over the boiling stock, cover and allow to steam for 5 minutes. FLUFF the couscous with a fork and toss with the scallion, parsley and mint. DRIZZLE over the remaining lemon/oil mixture and the crumbled feta and toss well to combine. SET the couscous salad aside while the fish continues to marinate. HEAT a cast iron grill pan over a high heat until very hot. COOK the fish fillets in the pan for around 3 minutes each side until just cooked. SERVE each fillet on a bed of the couscous salad and spoon the heated robust red sauce over the top.

Variations: Grill chicken breast fillets instead of fish. Serve any leftover couscous salad tossed with strips of smoked salmon and cubed avocado (drizzled with lemon juice to prevent browning).

Rigatoni with robust red sauce, tuna and broccoli

Serves 2

• 8 oz (240g) dried rigatoni pasta
• 2 cups broccoli florets
• ½ portion of the Robust Red Sauce recipe — heated
• 6 oz (180g) canned tuna in olive oil — drained and broken into chunks
• Shaved or grated Parmesan cheese to serve

COOK the pasta in a large pot of salted boiling water, adding the broccoli to the pot for the final 5 minutes of cooking. DRAIN the cooked pasta and broccoli, put the sauce in the bottom of the pot and top with the hot pasta, broccoli and tuna chunks. TOSS together gently to combine well and heat through. SERVE the pasta with a little shaved or grated Parmesan on top.

Do you think that pasta is a disaster for blood sugar levels? As soon as pasta touches your lips, do you think it goes to your hips? Do you think that white pasta is virtually devoid of nutrients?

If you answered yes to any or all of the above questions, you might be surprised to learn that these are all common myths.

Do you want to know what the real deal is with pasta? Then you might want to check out an article I wrote recently for the food website, Culinate. It’s called The Pasta Myth, and I not only debunk some common pasta myths, I also show you how pasta can be a healthy (and very tasty!) addition to a balanced diet.

Here’s the beginning of the article:

In September, the unthinkable happened: Italy had its first-ever national pasta strike.

Throughout Italy, thousands of sullen-faced Italians protested the rising price of their national dish by refusing to purchase pasta that day. But even the organizers of the strike realized that Italians could never go a day without actually eating pasta, so they gave it out for free.

But while pasta has the power to evoke such a passionate response in Italy, in North America there’s an ongoing battle for the hearts and minds of pasta lovers.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

I tend to get pretty lazy at the end of the day, so the last thing I can be bothered doing is cooking an elaborate meal. I think elaborate meals should be saved for elaborate occasions. Simple, but not simplistic, food is what I like the best.

One of the simplest dishes of all is pasta. And one of the simplest, yet most flavorsome ways to enjoy pasta is with fast-roasted vegetables. It’s as easy as tossing some roughly chopped vegetables with olive oil and seasonings and throwing them in the oven, while simultaneously boiling a pot of pasta. Then, when everything is cooked, simply toss the vegetables (which have sweetened and intensified in flavor during the roasting process) with the pasta, and sprinkle with some grated Parmesan cheese. This is set and forget cooking at its best!

And if you want to boost the protein content, you can easily whip open some good quality canned tuna and toss it through the hot vegetables and pasta just before serving. Canned cannellini beans also work really well — just make sure you give them a quick rinse and drain first. And if you want to add some crunch, just sprinkle some lightly toasted pine nuts over the top.

Fast-roasted Vegetable Pasta

Serves 2 generously

• 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 3 cloves garlic — minced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon dried chili flakes
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped parlsey
• 1 bunch asparagus (or 15 green beans)
• 1/2 red pepper –cut into thick strips
• 1/2 green pepper — cut into thick strips
• 1/2 yellow pepper — cut into thick strips
• 12 button mushrooms-thickly sliced
• 8 oz (240g) dried fettuccine
• Parmesan cheese to serve

PREHEAT the oven to 450F/230C. MIX together the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, pepper, chili and parsley. TOSS with the vegetables in a baking dish, and bake for 15 minutes. WHILE the vegetables are roasting, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the pasta according to package directions. DRAIN the pasta, reserving 2 tablespoons of the cooking water, and toss gently with the roasted vegetables until well combined. SERVE with a little grated Parmesan cheese.