Italian

This satisfying pasta is an easy-to-make entrée to serve after a night on the town. Just add a salad, bread, and some sorbet and biscotti to complete the meal.

Button mushrooms would also be fine here. This recipe can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Even easier: Use purchased pesto to help speed up the preparation.

To complete the menu, serve seeded Italian breadsticks and a salad of radicchio and marinated artichoke hearts tossed with balsamic vinaigrette. Spumoni ice cream is a perfect ending.

Here's a great prelude to a main-course pasta.

Here is one of the most popular ways for cooking shrimp in Italy and throughout the Mediterranean. In American-Italian cuisine, this recipe would be referred to as "Shrimp Scampi," a curious title since scampi means shrimp, which means the name, literally translated, is "Shrimp Shrimp." Good Italian or French bread should always be served with this dish for sopping up the good garlicky sauce.

This bread and butter pudding gets its Italian flavor from panettone, a Milanese egg bread studded with raisins and candied fruit. Long a Christmastime specialty, panettone is becoming increasingly available throughout the year not only in Italy but also in the United States. Note: Panettone can be found in some Italian markets and specialty foods shops.

This combination of black and green olives, onion and garlic is a rendition of the relish served on the classic New Orleans sandwich called muffuletta from the Palladio restaurant in the Hyatt Regency in Rochester, New York.

(COMPOSTA DI CILIEGE E ALBICOCCHE) Delicious with the Rice Pudding Cake or with biscotti or vanilla ice cream.

At Woodside in West Los Angeles, owner Noel Ampel and executive chef Nigel Faulkner both believe in taking the freshest ingredients and combining them in simple, yet highly sophisticated ways. This pasta is a fine example of that philosophy. A basket of crusty warm rolls and a salad of mixed baby greens with a Sherry vinaigrette are great accompaniments. End with coffee gelato and chocolate-dipped biscotti. Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

Typical of hearty vegetable dishes of the Apulian region of Italy is this easy-to-make mixture of cabbage, onion and prosciutto.

Homemade ravioli are made simple here with readily available gyoza wrappers (look for them in the refrigerated Asian section of your supermarket).

(GERMINUS) Sardinia has many interestingly named sweets, and these cookies called germinus are the most famous of all. They are flatter and chewier than classic meringues and get a crisp accent from the nuts.