America's Test Kitchen

This soup of pasta and clams is a Sardinian classic that’s all about simplicity. It relies chiefly on the flavor inherent in the soup’s two main ingredients: chewy, toasty spherical fregula, and arselle, the small, briny, succulent hard-shell clams found along the coast.

A classic Roman peasant meal, coda alla vaccinara is a lush braise originally prepared by slaughtermen (vaccinari) who were often paid with the undesirable parts of the animal. It’s from these parts, like oxtail, that they made delicious dishes and proved the underestimated worth of these inexpensive cuts.