What's Your Favorite Italian Meal?

Smoked salmon carbonara. It can be a bit tricky to make with needing the right temperature for the eggs, but it is excellent.

Some type of pasta with cream sauce.

Either meatless Red Gravy (Italian Tomato Sauce) with fusilli bucati or Braccioli with fusilli bucati or bucatinni. Thick hollow pasta, like a straw. Braccioli is a rolled, stuffed flank steak, (I use a dried bread cube and herb stuffing and and bind it with egg) tied close, browned in oil. Then you build your Red Gravy around it. You simmer it in the Gravy. It has to cook for hours until the meat falls apart and gets stringy. Then cut the bracciolli and serve with the pasta and sauce. (In our dialect, it's pronounced "Bra-zholee' with the zh like the sio in "vision." Roll the "R."



Or Angel Hair Pasta with a sauce I kind of made up. It's made from cooking olive oil, butter, balsamic vinegar, a splash of wine (once it starts to boil) and sea salt or Kosher salt and a little pinch of sugar. Cook for a while, then some chopped Italian Parsley, until the vinegar smell is cooked out and then add an other pat of butter. Put the cooked Angel Hair into the sauce on low heat to absorb. The best for a quick dinner. I used to make this late at night, when my younger child was a baby and I needed carbs and she was just starting solids. I'd cut the pasta up for her. She still loves it. You can add some shaved vegetables to this, but not too much. NO cheese. This dish needs to be pure and the balsamic has to shine.

Spaghetti or 4 cheese rigatoni, oh, and alfredo!