Feature image above: Raimondo’s cooking classes show just how effortless Italian cooking can be.

 

Margie Raimondo is a woman of many talents — AY About You recipe columnist, cookbook author, urban farmer and entrepreneur. The founder of Urbana Farmstead in Little Rock, Raimondo hosts classes, serves groups and generally spreads the good news of cuisine of Italy, her ancestral homeland.

 

AY pulled up a chair with the busy Raimondo for some quick tips about authentic Italian cooking, honoring the culture and the secret to really great pasta.

 

AY About You: Every culture has dishes where you need to look at its origins to really understand it. What should people understand about pasta’s heritage to prepare it properly?

 

Margie Raimondo: The most important thing is simplicity. Simplicity is the secret in all Italian dishes. Even though Italian food is widely regional, it all shares simplicity. When you are using the freshest ingredients from your area as you make your sauce, you are not only honoring the tradition that’s always been; you’re now linking that heritage to modern-day food.

 

AY: What do cooks frequently get wrong about great pasta, especially starting out?

 

Raimondo: If you are making pasta from scratch, you never put salt or oil in the recipe. It’s really two ingredients: flour and water if you’re going to dry it or flour and egg if you’re going to eat it as fresh pasta.

 

The reason you don’t salt it is because you’re going to salt your water. The rule is you should let your water boil and then add one tablespoon of salt per pound of pasta. The water’s supposed to be briny like the sea, as we say in Italy. If you put oil in it, it’s just going to be a sticky mess; some people even put oil in their water when they’re boiling it, which is also a very bad mistake.

 

Another really important thing is all pasta dishes should be finished in a separate pot. Pasta’s like a sponge; if you allow it to finish cooking in your sauce, it absorbs, and it’s much better to eat that way. You use less sauce while really enhancing the flavor.

 

Margie Raimondo, left,
and Patricia Paulson

 

AY: Let’s talk about pizza. How does that fit into authentic Italian cooking?

 

Raimondo: Pizza’s always one of two things: street food or a main. As street food, you don’t go and order a big pizza; you order a piece of pizza. As a main, it’s only sold in restaurants, and good luck going to any authentic restaurant anywhere in Italy and asking for a pizza in the middle of the day. They’re just not sold like that.

 

Of course, pizza as a main isn’t what we think of here. People don’t order a 20-inch pizza to share. It’s a 9- or 10-inch pizza that uses a lot of vegetables, a beautiful cheese, and it could have a protein. Regionally, that differs. Pizza in Sicily, where my dad’s side of the family is, is so different than my mom’s pizza from Naples — completely different animals.

 

AY: What about Italian cooking intimidates people the most?

 

Raimondo: The stigma that everything takes a long time to cook. They’re really surprised to find out you can make pasta in 30 minutes. They’re always intimidated by the thought that a sauce is going to be a six-hour affair. They’re surprised when they come to my classes, and I’ve got four ingredients or less, and the pasta sauce only takes 30 to 60 minutes to make, and it tastes delicious.

 

I think a lot of people come to class thinking, ‘I’m going to do this, and I’m going to have a good time, but I’ll never use it because it takes so long.” What happens instead is they see it doesn’t take all day, and so they’re going home and replicating what we did in class. They send me pictures all the time.

 

SEE THE FEATURE BELOW AND IN OUR AUGUST 2026 ISSUE OF AY MAGAZINE