Giorgia Goggi mixes this slow-cooked tomato sauce with octopus and saffron into paccheri pasta di Gragnano, a thick, air-dried Italian macaroni. But any robust pasta shape will do. Get the recipe for Pasta with Octopus Ragu and Stracciatella »Rumor has it that pasta puttanesca–literally “whore’s pasta”–was a quick and easy dinner of choice among Neapolitan working ladies, but the dish’s salacious history is unlikely. Get the recipe for Classic Spaghetti Puttanesca »Matt Taylor-Gross
This classic pasta, from award-winning chef Fulvio Pierangelini at his restaurant, Irene, in Florence, Italy, is enriched with the lobsters’ coral, or roe sac. It adds a pop of briny flavor to the pasta, but can be omitted if the lobsters you buy don’t contain it. Get the recipe for Lobster Linguine with Chiles »
Flavored with shrimp, garlic, and zingy flakes of red pepper, this pasta dish is devilishly good.
Versions of this satisfying, cream-laced crawfish pasta are served at restaurants throughout Louisiana and Mississippi. The level of heat from hot sauce is left up to the cook.
This dish, along with linguine with red clam sauce and oven-baked rigatoni, is a mainstay of the Italian-American fare served at Figaretti’s in Wheeling, West Virginia. See the recipe for Figaretti’s ‘Godfather II’ Linguine »
In this representative Sicilian dish, which seamlessly combines Arab and Sicilian flavors, pasta is tossed with sardines from the Mediterranean, raisins and pine nuts grown in the mountains, and a dash of saffron, which imbues the pasta with a golden color. Look for small sardines, which are sweeter and more delicate than larger ones. Get the recipe for Linguine with Sardines, Raisins, and Pine Nuts (Pasta con le Sarde) »
