Pasta Basics

• When preparing dishes for a traditional Italian feast, always start with homemade pasta. But if you don’t have the time, equipment or skills to make it, buy the highest-quality fresh pasta that you can find. Salt the water generously with kosher salt to bring out the flavor of the pasta as it cooks. Bring the water to a full, rolling boil before adding the pasta, because if the water isn’t quite hot enough, the pasta will get gluey. For baked dishes, drain the pasta before it finishes cooking, so that it doesn’t come out mushy when added to your traditional Christmas pasta. Toss the pasta with olive oil, salt and pepper rather than rinsing it, and it won’t stick together while you are assembling the rest of the ingredients for your baked dish. Smaller pasta shapes work better in baked dishes than longer, thinner ones like fettuccine or spaghetti.

Baccala

• It is traditional to eat fish rather than meat on Christmas Eve, as well as on many other days important in Italian culture. Baccala is a salted and dried fish that is -- like the simple pasta with anchovies and olive oil served during the Christmas season -- meant to remind all Italians of their humble roots. Every cook has her own version of baccala, but it is reminiscent of Southern scalloped oysters. Flaked baccala, bread crumbs, stewed tomatoes, olives, capers and Italian spices all come together to make a dish that is as simple and hearty as it is comforting and homey.

Tomato-Based Dishes

• The most-famous baked Italian dish has to be lasagna. The dish, comprising layers of long, wide flat noodles, ricotta cheese, spices and rich tomato sauce, is simple, rich and perfect. It is also incredibly versatile in that you can use any kind of meat for the sauce, leave out the meat or substitute vegetables for the meat. Manicotti is very much like lasagna, but instead of layers of flat noodles, you use large, round tubes that you can stuff with a seasoned mixture of ricotta, parmesan and reggiano cheeses. Mostaccioli is made from much smaller pasta tubes, as is baked penne. The advantage to smaller pasta shapes is that they require no stuffing, so they take less time to prepare.

Cream-Based Dishes

• Almost any dish that is tomato-based can also be made with a cream sauce. You can use beef, pork, veal or a mixture of all three for a white lasagna, but seafood and vegetables complement a cream sauce best. Most creamy Italian sauces have a more delicate seasoning combination as well. Nutmeg, salt, pepper and garlic work well together especially when highlighted with a bit of lemon. Be aware that the sweet, white concoction sold popularly as Alfredo sauce bears no resemblance to the rich, velvety mixture of egg yolks, wine and Parmesan cheese created by Chef Alfredo for his morning-sick wife. But it is still a quick and easy substitute for homemade cream sauce at this busiest time of year. Some examples of cream-based Italian baked pastas are cheese cannelloni, crab-stuffed shells and seafood lasagna.