pasta

To a novice cook, making pasta from scratch sounds like a daunting task, and it does take some time and patience. Still, if you've got a food processor, a hand-cranked pasta machine and a pot of boiling water, it's mainly a process of flattening out a dough made of flour and eggs.

From Bolognese to carbonara, a rich variety of pasta sauces keeps adventurous cooks busy and their friends delighted. The Italians may start a meal with a pasta course, but the Food Guys say it may be hard to resist filling up before the meat course. They do recommend selecting a sauce to match the pasta shape. For example, light sauces evenly coat long, thin noodles whereas thick, creamy sauces are best with wide noodles or tube pasta that can catch the sauce.

When we think of pesto, it's usually the classic basil pesto of Northern Italy, pesto alla genovese, served over pasta.

Greg and Jon suggest a flow chart for improvising your next pasta dish. Pick ingredients from each of the following categories, matching complementary flavors, working quickly as everything cooks. "You can have dinner in half an hour," promises Greg.