Pasta

Running out of time to cook vegetables? You can make this delicious dish in the time it takes you to boil water and cook pasta. You just need a few delicious timesavers. Tricks like a simple pesto built on the snappy flavour of arugula or the convenience of a store-bought rotisserie chicken. And it doesn’t take long to melt bell peppers. Save time and fill Half Your Plate with vegetables!

This classic pasta dish is an easy way to show off the flavours of spring and fill Half Your Plate with lots of delicious asparagus. The super-simple sauce and streamlined method lets you cook the veggies and pasta at the same time. You’ll love the tangy bright flavours and watching bowls empty all around you!

You haven’t lived until you’ve slow roasted a tomato. This simple method unlocks the deepest possible flavour from just about any tomato. A long slow roast surrounded by lots of aromatic flavours easily melts whole baby tomatoes into a tasty sauce for your favourite pasta that more than fills Half Your Plate!

This is one of the great beef stews of the world. It's a uniquely Hungarian dish that's half way between a soup and a stew. While in Hungary, I learned a couple of things. First, that every cook has a different version of this recipe and second, that everyone believes their version is the most authentic. So to me, that means all versions are authentic as long as they contain Hungarian flavours.

This recipe is dedicated to the memory of Ann Szemba, my Hungarian friend who traveled with me to Hungary and taught me this dish.

Eggs are one of the most versatile ingredients in your kitchen. It lets you get food to your family in a hurry without sacrificing flavour. With carbonara, you harness the power of the egg yolk for a quick pasta fix. You can have this dish ready in the time it takes to boil water and cook pasta. The heat from the freshly cooked pasta will thicken the egg yolk in the sauce at the last moment. You'll be amazed at how something to simple and so speedy can be so tasty.

Mac and cheese is delicious just the way it is, but why not amp it up with some Italian flavours? A creamy sauce is built with easy-melting Fontina and flavour-packed Grana Padano cheeses. Spicy Italian sausage, bright tomatoes and classic herbs will have your family proclaiming "mi amore!".

What ingredient gets my heart pounding every time I haul it out, makes everything else taste amazing and is so popular entire websites are devoted to it? Bacon! Here are my three favorite ways to show it off.

A recipe is merely words on paper; a guideline, a starting point from which to improvise. It cannot pretend to replace the practiced hand and telling glance of a watchful cook. For that reason feel free to stir your own ideas into this dish. When you cook it once, it becomes yours, so personalize it a bit. Add more of an ingredient you like or less of something you don’t like. Try substituting one ingredient for another. Remember words have no flavour, you have to add your own!

There are few things more comforting in the kitchen than an old-school batch of mac n’ cheese. Ooey gooey goodness. Perfection—almost—I mean have you ever added bacon to your mac n’ cheese?

If your house is anything like mine, they’ve already smelled the bacon and are lined up, waiting to share!

Pasta with a simple tomato sauce is one of the all time great flavor combos, but there’s more than one way to make a tomato sauce. Here’s a quick way to toss a few flavors together, let the oven do the work and wind up with pasta that tastes like pizza!

This rustic dish shows how easy it is to braise any type of meat in a tomato sauce. The results are tender, flavourful and perfect for any type of pasta. This is a hearty meal in a bowl.

This is my family’s all-time favourite dinner party pasta dish. Our friends request it all the time. I’m happy to oblige because it tastes great, and the sauce makes itself! It’s easy. Steaming wet, just-cooked pasta and melting cream cheese form an incredibly smooth luxurious sauce. The smoked salmon adds flavour extravagance that’s balanced by the familiar flavours of capers, dill, lemon, onion and mustard. A five-star dish for sharing!