Pasta (usually short, long pasta being more suited to informal lunches)

It has excellent antipasti and pasta dishes, and its house special, casarecce alla botte (short pasta with a meat sauce), is good if you fancy a change from fish.

Note: Caponata makes a delicious sauce for short pasta such as penne.

One of my favorite Italian soups is pasta e fagioli, which is made from borlotti beans and penne rigate, short tubular pasta.

Two of us had castellana, a short pasta, a shade too al dente, sauced with grouper, a little fresh tomato and coarsely grated Parmesan.

Thicker and chunkier sauces have the better ability to cling onto the holes and cuts of short, tubular, twisted pastas.

This sauce may be spread on canapés or tossed with short pasta like penne ( pound) and a little of the pasta cooking water.

Tubettoni con le cozze, large-bore short pasta in a very light tomato sauce with mussels, tasted of the sea.

This was a thick soup of white beans, mussels, ditalini (a short tubular pasta), a little tomato and a lot of garlic, not at all heavy on a hot day.

We also tried garganelli, a handmade short pasta of northeast Italy, with a sauce of castraure.