17 Main dish recipes
Cheese and mushroom casserole with chicken
This casserole is simple and delicious, and makes a perfect snack during a picnic (bento anyone?)—you should use it as a basic idea for a casserole, since the pasta sauce is the stable and the most important piece of the meal. It's also a very tweak-able recipe! :-)
Difficulty
Triple-reduced mushroom sauce
This is one of my signature dishes—it's delicious, rich and hearty, and goes well with any kind of base: pasta, potatoes, and rice just taste superb together. My secret to the intensive, flavorful sauce is the triple reduction of the ingredients' fluids, due to cooking in batches and mixing in specific order. It takes some time, but the result is so much worth it! :-)
Difficulty
Shepherd's pie
This one is a real pickle — it's extremely simple, and doesn't look spectacular, but packs a serious punch of flavor and deliciousness. You can easily upgrade or downgrade the recipe based on your liking, use different ingredients, but as long as you make ground meat under a blanket of mashed potatoes, it's gonna be fine ;-)
Difficulty
Maltagliati
When you make your own pasta, you will always end up with some scraps, even more if you make ravioli. You can easily recycle this leftover pasta to make maltagliati, meaning "poorly cut" in Italian, which was traditionally meant as food for the poor. We are way past that, and today you can enjoy rich texture and amazing flavor of your pasta without the social stigma ;-)
Difficulty
Honey meat ravioli
This delicious meal is amazingly easy to prepare, as long as you have a pasta machine and ravioli tablet — it's a small grid in which you can prepare ravioli "like a sandwich", then roll out the ready ravioli using a rolling pin. Super easy, and with just very little effort you will end up having a luxurious feast!