A wedge of Parmigiano-Romano and a grater. Photo courtesy of UmamiInfo.com.

Buy good Parmesan or other Italian grating cheese from your cheese store, have it grated very finely at the store and keep it in the freezer. It’s instantly usable for pasta, omelets, soups, salads or anything that could use a flavor lift.

Don’t buy pre-grated cheese at the supermarket—it isn’t top-quality cheese, yet you pay a lot more for the service. Of course, the best solution is to keep a wedge of cheese in the fridge to grate as needed—but our frozen cheese convenience really works!

We love mixing grated cheese with leftover rice and a bit of milk and fresh-ground pepper (add cooked mushrooms or or other ingredients if you like) and heating it in the microwave for a mock “risotto.”

Say “cheese!” Van Harden’s pizza is gluten-
free, which means few carbs as well. It
uses a cheese-based crust. Photo by
Hannah Kaminsky| THE NIBBLE.

From the crisp crust to the melted cheese, we love everything about pizza. But for carb counters and, more importantly, people with gluten allergies, that crust presents a problem. Millions of Americans can’t tolerate a protein in wheat, rye and barley—and, therefore, traditional pizza crust is verboten.

While it’s possible to buy gluten-free pizza crusts and make pizza from scratch, Van Harden offers a faster solution: frozen pizzas in three varieties with no bread crust whatsoever.

The crust is made from cheese, which gives the nearly 3 million Americans with Celiac disease, people with wheat allergies, everyone on the Atkins Diet and every carb counter a heat-and-eat way to enjoy pizza again.

Available in Cheese, Pepperoni or Sausage (our favorite, shown in the photo at left), you can order Van Harden’s Pizza online until national distribution broadens. (It’s currently available in Hy-Vee retail stores in seven Midwest states.)

We hope that you had a tasty National Pasta Day yesterday. If you were a little overzealous in your pasta preparation, any leftover, unsauced pasta can be turned into a pasta salad. Or, serve it as a side with a totally different sauce. Cold tortellini make a tasty hors d’oeuvre—provide toothpicks and a dip (we especially love pumpkin tortellini this way). Add “short cuts”—shaped pasta—to a green salad. If the pasta is already sauced, adding cubes of grilled chicken, pork, ham, seafood or vegetables turns it into a brand-new dish.

It’s National Pasta Day, but think twice before breaking out that box of regular old rigatoni. If you love pasta, you may love flavored pastas even more. There are dozens to try, from artichoke and lemon pepper to jalapeño and wasabi. They’re delicious, and they make cooking a gourmet meal a snap. Create a main dish around them, use them as an exciting side or enjoy them simply with butter or olive oil and fresh Parmesan cheese.

It’s National Pizza Month. There’s no reason not to have your own pizza festival at home—it’s easy to make gourmet pizzas! Start with a flat pizza crust like Boboli and top it with fresh sliced mozzarella and truffle cheese (available at fine cheese stores). Add fresh mushrooms: Pass by the white button mushrooms and go for the more flavorful wild varieties (see our Mushroom Glossary). Bake until golden brown and slightly bubbling. Sprinkle with chopped fresh basil, and for more truffle flavor, drizzle with white truffle oil prior to serving.

You’ll always have a deluxe pasta dinner on hand if you tuck away a bag or two of gourmet pasta in beautiful shapes and colors, along with some jars of roasted peppers, marinated artichoke hearts and good breadsticks. Keep a container of quality, fine-grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano cheese in the freezer, along with some sliced gourmet sausages. When you need an impressive dinner in 15 minutes, just cook the pasta and zap the sausage in the microwave. You can open a jar of sauce, but you don’t even need a formal sauce—just toss the pasta with the grated cheese (straight from the freezer) plus butter or fine olive oil, and offer diners a grind of fresh pepper. Serve with the breadsticks and a roasted pepper and artichoke “antipasto,” drizzled with balsamic vinegar. If you happen to have a loaf of Italian bread and fresh salad greens, so much the better!

Celebrate National Pasta Month (October) by treating yourself to some great pastas. Check out the pastas in specialty food stores. Most people are tempted to save money on staples like pasta. But pasta isn’t a commodity—you get what you pay for. The best companies pay for the best strains of durum wheat, and spend lots on equipment that retains the most protein and texture as the dough is processed into pasta. If you’re not already using the best brands, next time, test a better brand against what you generally use. See if the extra dollar or even three dollars for a package that serves four people isn’t more than worth it for the extra-delicious taste and texture. Italians are demanding about the taste of their pasta; they use very little sauce.

When using decorative pastas (pumpkins, hearts, grape clusters), you don’t need to serve a full bowl of the special shapes. Use just 1/4 to 1/3 of the decorative shapes and fill the majority of the bowl with a standard “short cut” like elbows or small shells. The special shapes will actually stand out better against the regular pasta than they do all by themselves, especially if you mix and match pasta colors. And it’s easier on the budget—decorative pasta can costs five times or more what the elbows do.

• Learn more about decorative pasta.
• Check out all the different pasta shapes in our Pasta Glossary.

Along with Sauces ‘n Love, this is our favorite brand of fresh pasta and pasta sauces—refrigeration required. We like the sauces better than the sauces at our local restaurants. Retailers and restaurateurs should hasten to taste them and consider if they’re offering the best they can to their customers. We like nothing better than making a great pasta sauce…but we can’t make any this good!

With most marinaras, alas, the main characteristic is “red”—and worse, red with sugar thrown in to provide flavor that the other ingredients aren’t good enough to generate. With Cucina Fresca, lush tomatoes are joined by flavorful onions, fresh basil, garlic and oregano. It is a much-appreciated marinara. But there’s even more excitement with our favorites, the Basil Cream Sauce and the Tomato Vodka Sauce. The Basil Cream Sauce upon the Caramelized Pear And Gorgonzola Ravioli was simply heaven.

If your retailer isn’t carrying this line, ask!

Make restaurant-quality (or better) pasta dishes. Photo courtesy of Cucina Fresca.

• Read the history of lasagne.
• Check out this recipe for a dessert lasagne.
• Here’s a recipe for a rice pesto “lasagne”—there are no noodles. Layers of rice are used instead.