Historically speaking, an osteria was a spartan, no-frills establishment where people would go to have a drink. The original osterias date all the way back to the Roman Empire. If you go to Ostia Antica or Pompeii, you find the osterias of the era. They were like bed-and-breakfasts, with rooms for rent above the dining room where people could listen to music.
Italy could soon be set to ban horse meat as part of a law that would define equine animals including horses, donkeys and mules as pets, therefore making it illegal to kill them. The bill has been drafted by Michela Vittoria Brambilla, a politician with Noi Moderati, a member of Giorgia Meloni's ruling coalition, and is backed by opposition parties. If approved, it would impose jail terms of up to three years and fines of up to 100,000 (87,000) for the slaughter of equines.
Few low-prep dishes satisfy and delight on busy weeknights like one-pot pastas, and one of the best ingredients to take your pasta dishes to the next level is vegetable broth. Boiling dry pasta directly in vegetable broth instead of water imparts bolder flavor as the pasta soaks it up. Plus, you'll end up with a pot full of starchy cooking liquid from the boiled pasta, which can provide a solid base for building a pan sauce.
Country of origin labeling became mandatory on all international products entering the United States in 2009. The goal was to ensure American consumers knew where the products they were buying came from, enabling shoppers to make informed buying decisions. These products include everything from Mexican avocados to French wine to pasta from Italy, with the latter thankfully safe from recent U.S. tariffs. However, does the location a product comes from actually matter?
Northern Italian cooking is built for long meals, cold weather, and patience, which is exactly the sort of food you want when settling in for hours of competition. From Lombardy and Piedmont to Emilia-Romagna and Liguria, these regions favor slow braises, creamy risottos, rich broths, and breads meant to be torn and shared. Whether you're feeding a crowd or committing to a cozy afternoon
The ravioli-type dish, also known as casunziei all'Ampezzana, consists of homemade half-moon shaped pasta filled with boiled beets, topped with a sauce of melted butter, Parmesan cheese and poppy seeds. It's a simple dish that harks back to the Alpine region's poorer past - long before Cortina transformed into a winter playground for the international jet set. Even in the coldest days of winter, local families had the ingredients in their cupboards.
This coccoli, which can be a street food or restaurant appetizer, is truly an icon in Florentine - a term that simply means "from Florence" - fare. The word "coccoli" translates literally to "cuddles," and these fried dough balls do indeed feel like warm little hugs. They're about the size of dumplings; served hot, they've got a crispy exterior to crack into - with just the right amount of grease - where you'll find both fluffiness and chewy doughy-ness all at once.
Buttered noodles are one of the best comfort food dishes out there. There is something very homey about eating the slippery-slidey and carby pasta noodles topped with a copious amount of rich, salty butter. While much of the beauty of this dish is in its simplicity, there are numerous ways to doctor up your buttered pasta to give it a more sophisticated and adult flavor, and you can make yours extra savory by adding anchovies.
Making it onto this list of our best pasta recipes is kind of a big deal. We tried to count how many pasta dishes we've developed over the course of this publication's history-modern mathematics cannot accommodate such a figure. You can imagine how painstaking it was to whittle down this list to just 31 recipes. But, fueled by a second helping of rigatoni alla vodka, we did it.
