For a year in college I studied art in Italy’s culinary capital, Bologna. I lived with four Italian girls who made endless variations of pasta and always had homemade chili oil on hand. It’s basically just olive oil and red pepper flakes — you can add whole dried peppers to the bottle if you have them (my parents grew and strung these for me last summer).

Most restaurants in Bologna had some sort of spicy oil available as well and I grew to really love the stuff! It’s a sinch to make and makes almost everything better — especially cheese pizza.