If you're like us and avoid restaurants on Valentine's Day, this is the dish for you. This is killer. The beautiful deep magenta color of the pasta just reminded me of Valentine's Day. The filling of goat cheese, Parmigiano cheese and chives is so luscious and creamy. And I thought some toasted chopped hazelnuts on top would add the perfect texture.  The filling is a breeze to make and the pasta dough is just plain fun.

I heard from an awful lot of you after I posted "Making Fresh Pasta" last month. Many of you tried making fresh pasta for the first time and I was so happy about that.  I think the video that was in the post showed how easy it was and some of you got out your pasta rollers for the first time.  

As promised, here is a recipe that uses both spinach pasta and plain pasta.  It's a classic Italian dish called "Straw and Hay".  I always love combining two different colored pastas in a dish.  It's delicious with the salty prosciutto, sweet peas and cheese.  

I'm going to be showing you lots of fresh pasta recipes this next year and I hope you will cook right along with me. Fresh homemade pasta is truly a fun thing to make and has so many creative possibilities.  And you can make it at a moment's notice - who doesn't have eggs and flour in their kitchen?  I've posted about making fresh pasta before, but I wanted to do an update and include a video to show you just how easy it is.  I know when people can see something being made they are more likely to try it.  So the video within this post may inspire you to make the leap!

There is no one correct recipe for fresh pasta.  In Italy, different regions have different ways of making it. Some places only use eggs and flour and others use only water and flour.  Some cooks add a little salt and olive oil, some do not.  You will have to experiment and decide what pasta recipe you like.  How do I like to make mine? I basically make my pasta the way they do in the Emilia Romagna region of Italy - with just fresh eggs and flour. 

There's lots of eggplant in season right now and here's the dish you want to make with it. This wonderful pasta dish is hugely popular in Sicily. It is named after Vincenzo Bellini's opera "Norma".  Bellini was a Sicilian born in Catania, where my mother went to school.  This dish is a delicious vegetarian dish, that uses a lot of the best ingredients of Sicily - eggplant, ricotta salata and basil.   And it's a snap to make. 

Most "Pasta alla Norma" recipes call for frying the eggplant, but I think roasting it is tastier and easier and doesn't take quite so much oil. 

bowl is from Mystic Mud Studio in Hood River, Oregon

With all the tomatoes in the garden right now, here is great way to use some of those up.  This pasta combines two types of tomatoes - one batch that is slow roasted in the oven and another that is just cut up, fresh.  It requires no real cooking, just letting the little grape tomatoes sit in the oven for a couple of hours at 300 degrees F and then boiling the pasta.  Everything is just tossed together in the serving bowl to create a fresh summer pasta dish with a minimal amount of effort.

When buying the mozzarella, try to find the type that is packed in water and comes in tubs. It's much fresher tasting and the texture is better than the type that is vacuum sealed.

Tip:  I've also made this recipe with grape tomatoes for both the roasted and fresh.  Works great. And another great pasta for this is orrecchiete - it holds the sauce so well.

Here is your summer side dish for grilled meats. This simple pasta dish of cheese and cracked black pepper is one of my family's favorites. If you've ever been to Rome, you will see this dish on practically every menu.  It is simple and fast to make. Once your water is boiling, it is a 5 minute preparation.

I hope everyone had a nice Easter holiday. I was overwhelmed, once again, by how many people made the Italian Easter Breads.  I'm so glad so many of you enjoyed them and that your kids loved them.  Thanks for all the e-mails.  I baked so many desserts myself this past weekend and each once was special.  I made this fantastic cake from Sweetapolita, David Lebovitz's fantastic lime tart and this pretty cheesecake.

I didn't want to post this recipe, but Brian made me do it.  This is one of his favorite sauces and he'll ask me from time to time if I've ever put it up on the blog.  And the answer has always been "no", because although we love this sauce, it's not much of a recipe and I didn't think it was blog-worthy.  Well, I've caved in and here it is.  

I just have to show you the Valentine's gift that my husband gave me.  He knows I'm a big Trekkie.  Did you get flowers or jewelry for Valentine's?  I got a pizza cutter.  And I loved it.  When I was a kid, my brothers and I had a model of the Starship Enterprise hanging above our T.V. set by a piece of fishing line.  Bless my little Italian mother - she never made us take it down, although it must have looked so dumb to guests.  I thought about hanging my new pizza cutter from my pot rack in my kitchen, just to bring back old times.   Maybe not.

Lots of us are trying to eat less meat but we still want to enjoy some of our favorite dishes, like a great bolognese sauce.  This recipe lets you do that and satisfy any vegetarian friends. The meaty mushrooms are a great substitute for meat and this recipe uses all the usual ingredients of a great meat sauce - wine, broth and lots of aromatic vegetables.

I have so many recipe files that I've kept over the years, it's amazing to me sometimes.  Ever since I was young  and really started cooking, I've cut out every little recipe idea that appealed to me.  It's fun to go back to those really old files and see what inspired me back then. Sometimes I find something that I absolutely forgot about, like this recipe.  

When Brian and I were on our honeymoon (25 years ago) we really didn't have any money.  But we splurged one evening and went to an Italian restaurant, where Brian ordered this ravioli with five cheeses.  He raved so much about it that when I got home, I contacted Bon Appetit and asked them to get the recipe.  I was sent the recipe, hammered out on an old typewriter on a piece of paper.  I made the ravioli and then filed the recipe away and totally forgot about it - until I came across it recently and thought it would be nice to make this ravioli again for him. The restaurant is long gone, but it's a timeless recipe.

I really love the idea of these individual little lasagnas - I think they're fun to serve and you can easily individualize them - for example, leaving out meat in one of them for someone who is a vegetarian.  As I was assembling these, Brian snuck in some pepperoncini and sun-dried tomatoes in one for himself.  You can use any kind of filling - I've made these before with sausage and marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese, for a more traditional lasagna taste.  The filling in these, however, is a simple saute of pancetta, leeks and garlic.  And oh, does it smell heavenly as you're cooking it.

This is absolutely one of my favorite pasta sauces.  I make a traditional bolognese or ragu sauce frequently from ground beef and pork, but this sauce is very different.  I make it from chicken thighs, which I braise, remove from the pot and then shred, removing the meat from the bone.  The meat is then placed back into the sauce to cook further. It has a very full, rich flavor from the vegetables, broth, wine and the addition of tomato paste (I used my homemade estratto from this fall).  You can serve this over any pasta.  I like orecchiette ("little ears" in Italian) because it holds the sauce so well.  This is also great over homemade gnocchi.

When The Daring Kitchen asked me to review “The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken” by Laura Schenone, I was excited because I had seen the book before and I have quite an interest in making ravioli.  This particular ravioli is made with a special rolling pin that has a checkerboard pattern which makes ravioli very quickly.  It's a fun method to try and I think if you are a beginner to ravioli, it is an especially easy method. 

I love to make hand crafted pasta and corzetti are such fun to make.   They are pasta discs that are stamped with a design, which helps to hold a sauce.  They are a regional pasta to Liguria in Italy.   In medieval times, they were stamped with the Genovese family crests. To make them by hand, you must have a corzetti stamp.

This is my new favorite dish.  It has to be, because I've made it every single week since I saw the recipe.

It's a luscious dish of pasta topped with tomatoes which are roasted with bread crumbs and stuffed with slivers of garlic.  Fresh herbs and crispy bits of pancetta top it off.  The flavors are perfect together.  To eat the dish, you just crush your tomato on top of your pasta and it makes this incredible sauce.  

When confronted with these beauties at the local farmers market, what would you do with them?

Growing up, I never liked beets. I think that's true of a lot of people because we were used to bad canned beets. The best way to enjoy beets is to buy them fresh, roast them simply in the oven, peel them and serve them with just a little olive oil and sea salt. When I started reading Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin, it inspired me to cook beets this way and I've loved them ever since.