Italian

Call this fish with puttanesca sauce—strong flavored, and swordfish can really take it. Serve with plenty of crusty bread or scoop out the fish after it cooks, put the sauce over pasta, and serve the fish on the side.

We tend to associate dried mushrooms with France and Italy, but of course they’re used wherever mushrooms grow wild, and that includes almost all of central Europe. In fact, some of the best (and least expensive) dried porcini (cèpes) sold in this country come from Poland. Make this a day in advance if you like and refrigerate, covered; reheat when you’re ready. Serve this with boiled potatoes, buttered noodles, or a rice dish, along with a vegetable or salad. This is also good served with grated fresh horseradish or Creamy Horseradish Sauce (page 608). Other cuts of meat you can use here: lamb, veal, or pork shoulder, all of which will cook more quickly than the beef.

A Roman classic and, like so many of those dishes, smacking of garlic, chile, and bay. You can serve this with just bread, of course, or precede it with a pasta dish or soup.

An easy, luxurious, and always surprising dish in which the milk becomes curds and the pork wonderfully tender. As long as you use the right cut, that is: be sure to get a roast from the shoulder end, either a rib (shoulder) roast or a piece of shoulder (Boston butt). The garlic variation is really majestic, but I begin with the milder version for those non-garlic-lovers out there. This is a very rich, very filling dish. You might serve it with nothing more than bread (or rice) and salad. Other cuts of meat you can use here: to my surprise, a friend suggested I try this with bone-in chicken thighs, and it worked beautifully. Much quicker, too.

What I suggest here—since most of us don’t have access to truly wild mushrooms—is a combination of dried porcini with fresh shiitakes and white (button) mushrooms. Serve this with buttered noodles, a risotto (even Bare-Bones Risotto, page 522, would be great), or crisp bread. Other cuts of meat you can use here: boneless pork shoulder, veal shoulder, or beef chuck or brisket (which will require somewhat longer cooking time).

One of the greatest Italian dishes and, when done properly (it takes time; do not rush), one of the best meat dishes you can make. The marrow-filled veal shanks (the name means “bone with hole”) practically cook themselves after the initial browning and seasoning. (And the dish holds well enough overnight so you can cook almost the whole thing in advance.) Buy center-cut shank, about 1 1/2 inches thick. (The slices from the narrow end have very little meat; those from the thick end contain little or no marrow.) The mixture of garlic, lemon zest, and parsley stirred in at the last minute, known as gremolata, is a lovely little fillip, but consider it optional. Serve, classically, with Risotto alla Milanese (page 521) or a simpler, leaner rice dish. Other cuts of meat you can use here: it will not be osso buco, but a veal stew made with chunks of veal shoulder in the same style, with the same ingredients, is quite good and considerably faster.

This is a classic combination of Italian spring vegetables, but it’s also a template for stewing any fresh veggies you like in olive oil. If you cannot get small artichokes—those so small they have no choke, so you can simply trim and quarter them—use frozen artichoke hearts. If you cannot get favas, use limas; here, too, frozen are okay, and the same with peas. This stew makes a good sauce for cut pasta, like penne. Other vegetables you can prepare this way: This is nearly a universal recipe; almost anything you can think of will work here, from spinach to potatoes to asparagus, as long as you adjust the cooking time accordingly. Mix and match as you like.

This is broccoli as it’s done in Rome: garlic, olive oil, and lemon (almost everything—from mussels to beans to veal—can be cooked with these flavorings and called Roman-style). The first method is more familiar and perhaps a tad more reliable for beginning cooks; the second requires a bit more judgment, but it’s better. If you like, add a few anchovy fillets along with the garlic. Other vegetables you can prepare this way: almost anything—dark leafy greens like collards and kale, cauliflower, green beans, carrots, and beets, for example.

This may be called a torte, sformata, crostata, teglia, or quiche, not to mention a dozen other names in different countries, mostly Mediterranean. They all begin with a simple pie shell and a pile of cooked vegetables (and sometimes meat). (The recipe will take less time if you have a premade crust.) Cheese, eggs, or other enriching ingredients may be added. The result may be a first course, a light lunch, or the centerpiece of a larger meal. You can also use any of these mixtures to make a crustless “torte”—see the variation. Other vegetables you can prepare this way: zucchini or summer squash may be substituted for the eggplant.

People cook food in packages all over the world—the tamale counts as one, too—but leave it to the Italians to do it simply. In Rome, you would have this with bass or turbot, but really it can be made with any fillet you like. Cooking in packages requires a small leap of faith to determine that the food is done, because once you open the packages you want to serve them. This method has always worked well for me.

I had this dish in Genoa, which is near Albenga, a part of Liguria best known for its artichokes. All the work is in preparing the artichokes, and the results are fantastic. In true Ligurian fashion, you might begin this meal with Pasta with White Clam Sauce (page 99) or Pansotti (page 550).

Somewhat more elegant than its more famous French cousin, which is featured in the variation. Good hot, perhaps even better warm or at room temperature, this is an ideal buffet or picnic preparation. Like the eggplant pie on page 459, this may be prepared without a crust. Other vegetables you can prepare this way: onions of any type.

Everyone who grows red peppers roasts red peppers, because it is, to use a legal term, their highest and best use. Once they’re roasted, you can include them in a variety of recipes found here and in other books, or you can sauté them with onion and tomato, include them in stews, or put them on sandwiches. Arguably, they are at their best when served at room temperature, drizzled with oil and perhaps with some capers and anchovies. (They also keep very, very well, up to a few days, refrigerated.) You can roast these, grill them, or broil them; all methods work about equally well. Obviously, if you grill over wood, you’re going to get some added (and welcome) flavors.

A sweet classic, peperonata, like many vegetable stews, is easily varied: add chunks of potato, chicken, or zucchini or some minced garlic; a small chile or a bit of cayenne is also appropriate. Serve it hot as a side dish, warm as a topping for Crostini (page 41), or cold as a relish.

The presence of artichokes in Liguria (the “Italian Riviera”) is enough to make you envious; they’re everywhere, they’re good, and everyone seems to know what to do with them. Here’s a simple dish, assuming you can get your hands on some good artichoke hearts. This is wonderful with either crusty bread or a simple rice dish, like Rice with Onions, Garlic, and Herbs (page 518). See page 98 for squid cleaning instructions if you need them.

Among my favorite squid dishes. Although sautéing, stir-frying, and deep-frying are good, fast techniques for squid, they tend to be messy because of squid’s marked tendency to spatter when cooked in oil. A gentle braise in flavorful liquid and seasonings is the perfect alternative, and this one, with its Provençal spirit, is delicious and warming. See page 98 if you buy squid that hasn’t been cleaned. Crusty bread is a must; keep the vegetable simple.

A beauty—mild, soothing, and delicious. Be sure to use waxy (“new”) potatoes, which will not fall apart. As with the other tarts in this chapter, this is best warm or at room temperature and may be prepared without any crust at all. If you’re using a crust, the recipe will take less time if you have a premade crust.

When you want a rice dish that screams “northern Italy,” but you don’t want something as rich (or as much work) as risotto, try throwing together this Italian rice salad, which was first made for me outside of Milan, served alongside a simply roasted chicken. You could add leftover chicken, shredded cheese, or other more substantial foods to make this into a meal, but it’s a wonderful side dish.

I love aggressively seasoned vegetables (see Broccoli or Cauliflower with Garlic and Lemon, Two Ways, page 452, specifically the second way, with the optional anchovies and dried chile added), and piadine are one of the best ways of justifying a meal centered around them. Piadine are griddle-cooked flatbreads from southern Italy that are sometimes folded and stuffed like calones. But it’s equally authentic, more convivial, and certainly easier to put a pile of piping hot piadine in the middle of the table surrounded by bowls of wilted kale and plates of grilled sausages or prosciutto. Have plenty of red wine on hand and let everybody help themselves.

The basic European bread, which requires more patience than work. It’s eminently flexible, because at any time you can refrigerate the dough and retard the process for hours, even overnight. Many people, in fact, believe that the slower you go with bread, the better. So it’s not only acceptable but preferable to make the dough at night, leave it in a cool place to rise for 8 or 10 hours, then proceed with the recipe, taking all day—if you like—to finish it. So, this recipe is written as if you will proceed from start to finish, but you don’t have to do so.