A quick and delicious dumpling soup - tender, translucent pasta pillows, pale green from their pea-stuffed bellies, are buoyed by yellow lentils in a simple clear broth. Golden puddles of olive oil are suspended across the surface, pooling in various cracks and crevices.

This baked pasta recipe features vibrant flecks of chopped spinach and lemon zest, toasted almond slices and oozy, bubbly cheese all enveloping sturdy little pasta shells.

This fettuccine recipe was inspired one of the many trips I made to the Testaccio Market while in Rome. Fresh ribbons of pasta with olive oil, porcini mushrooms, garlic, black pepper, and pecorino cheese.

My favorite lasagne recipe. Dozens and dozens of whisper-thin sheets of fresh pasta brushed with the most vibrant red tomato sauce imaginable all intersecting layer after layer of warm, oozy, fresh mozzarella.

The ultimate noodle soup recipe - imagine garbanzo beans bobbing about in a rich broth with thick ribbons of pasta noodles weaving in between them, droplets of olive oil suspended on the surface of the broth, and the whole thing punctuated with crisped fresh pasta that had been fried in olive oil.

My favorite new way to make gnocchi in a flash - no boil. Cook them in a skillet until they are golden and crusted, and in this case serve with summer shell beans and shredded cheese.

I'll never make lasagna any other way. Impossibly thin layers of feathery-light pasta with just enough sauce and cheese between each layer to keep it moist and flavorful.

Imagine a spring roll without the wrapper and you've got this Myra Kornfeld salad. A familiar chorus of flavors - sweet, sour, tangy, hot, and nutty all projected onto a mound of serpentine rice noodles and crispy mushrooms.

This healthy, colorful Sicilian broccoli and cauliflower pasta recipe comes from chef Tracy Bates at The Oxbow School in Napa - the students there love it.