Our Favorite Italian-American Grandma Dishes for Any Day

With extra vegetables

Our roster for today’s recipes is straight out of an Italian-American kitchen. We’ll start with a hearty minestrone soup with some detail to enhance flavor (like caramelizing aromatics). Then we’re moving on to one of our favorites — greens and beans — via pressure cooker. This recipe is followed by a dish that Mark’s mother used to make weekly, pan-cooked peppers and onions — with or without sausage; you can also amp the dish with vinegar or paprika. And finally, for our budget recipe, we’ve got the simplest of simple, one-pot pasta with butter and parmesan. Don’t be shy about using your best pasta for the last one — one that takes a little longer to cook but really delivers when it comes to the finished dish. Whole wheat pasta is a plus here, too. As usual, all recipes are available to members; thank you so much for your support.

Minestrone

Here’s an old-fashioned soup that you’d find in a red-sauce restaurant that might remind you of a soup a mother or a grandmother might make to make you feel better — a backup to chicken noodle (apparently it’s been around since at least the 1870s, and perhaps as early as the Roman Empire). But we can’t help but wonder if minestrone might be better for you — not just in terms of ingredients, but skill-building if you’re teaching yourself to cook.