Pine Nut

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are from Jamie Oliver's book Jamie's Italy. Pasta con acchiughe e pomodoro This is a poor people's pasta from Palermo in Sicily. You could use tagliatelle or spaghetti, but if you can find margherita pasta it's great — it looks thicker than spaghetti, and it's frilly down one edge. This sauce has great flavor and is very Sicilian with the raisins and pine nuts. P.S., I'd like to thank my mate John Hamilton, the incredible art director on this book, who made this dish with me in Sicily. He made it with such care and concentrated so hard staring at it that I thought it might turn to stone! As you can see from the picture, it goes to show that even a Glaswegian geezer can produce a pretty and delicate dish.

Homemade ravioli are well worth the effort, and making them is the perfect task to share with a kitchen full of cooks (even novices can get in on the fun). Mixing the pasta dough is a breeze in the food processor, but if you don't have one, don't worry — we've given the method for making the dough by hand as well. A brown-butter pine-nut sauce is light enough to let your efforts on the pasta really shine through.

Ambrosia is fruit dessert that is also a salad. We Southerners always add it to Thanksgiving and Christmas menus to allow us to have the illusion that we're not in too much trouble with our diets, because after all, "We only had ambrosia for dessert!" The better the oranges in it, the better it is. Splurge and get flavor-filled navel oranges if you can. In any case, seedless oranges are a must. If there are going to be children at the meal, you can add maraschino cherries—sans stems. My mother always did, perhaps because one of my treasured memories from childhood was when my father took me to the men's club and ordered me a Shirley Temple with a maraschino cherry. I ate nearly a whole bottle, thanks to the indulgent waiter.