Italian

Maltagliati means “badly cut” and is usually applied to fresh homemade pasta. Here I give you a shortcut way to enjoy the shape by breaking up dry lasagna sheets. If you want to make fresh maltagliati, follow the recipe for pasutice on page 20—the regional names vary, but the shape is the same. When using fresh pasta, remember you need more cooking water and you must stir maltagliati frequently, as the flat pieces have a tendency to stick. And if you don’t have lasagna, a long dry pasta such as fusilli lunghi or spaghetti will also be delicious with this sauce.

Driving north from Naples to Rome, you are bound to come to Gaeta, and you should make a point of sampling some tiella there. Every time I am in that vicinity, I stop by and enjoy some tiella with Nonna Lisa Corrado, my son-in-law’s maternal grandmother. According to him, she makes the best tiella in all of Italy. Tiella is made in Naples and throughout Italy, but it is a specialty in Gaeta, a beautiful seaside town on the border of Campania (Naples) and Lazio (Rome) regions. So what is tiella? It is a thin-crusted deep-dish pizza, stuffed with different combinations of vegetables and fish—escarole, broccoli rabe, octopus, olives, ricotta and Swiss chard, artichokes, and any other vegetable that is in season. It is topped and sealed with the same dough and baked until golden. Every time I stop for a piece of tiella, Nonna Lisa teaches me another filling. I take notes, and then I enjoy. I now make them at the restaurants and at home in New York, for my son-in-law. He enjoys them with a touch of nostalgia and following are two for you to enjoy.

The Golfo di Gaeta teems with octopus, and Nonna Lisa can buy them fresh all year round to make this delicious tiella filling. With rare exceptions, however, octopus sold in the United States has been frozen (and usually cleaned) before coming to market. And while I almost always prefer fresh seafood, properly frozen octopus is easy to handle and tastes excellent—some claim that freezing helps to tenderize the flesh. Buy octopus still frozen (not thawed) from a reliable fishmonger or online merchant.

You must be familiar with timballo from the film Big Night—maccheroni dressed with a wonderful sweet tomato sauce set in a big round form of pâte brisée to bake. A sweet crust with savory pasta might seem an unlikely combination, but the timballo is delicious and represents much of what is left of the Neapolitan kitchen from its aristocratic days under French-Spanish rule. These delightful pizzelle—small half-moon turnovers of raised sweet dough, stuffed with braised escarole, garlic, and sausage—are a wonderful and much simpler rendition of the timballo. The bitterness of the escarole and savory flavor of the meat, enveloped in the sweet crust, reach a perfect balance. These pizzelle make a great hors d’oeuvre, passed around still warm from the oven. They will win you much praise, and you do not need to labor over them at the last minute. You can make the dough and filling a day before. Moreover, the assembled pizzelle can be frozen and then baked when needed.

Of all the wonderful ricotta torte and crostate I have made, this one is so moreunpretentious and delightful that I urge you to put it in your dessert repertoire. The cake is moist and sweet, with a hint of orange and the crunch of toasted almond slices in each bite. In Rome, this cake is made with sheep’s-milk ricotta, giving it an additional layer of complexity, and if you do have access, by all means use sheep’s-milk ricotta and follow the same procedures. Top with a dollop of whipped cream, or, to make it fresher, fold into the whipped cream an equal amount of sour cream. Top all with berries in season, or some halved ripe figs when available.

If you think all gnocchi are potato-based bite-sized dumplings (as do most Americans), you are in for a surprise—and a great treat. Roman-style gnocchi di semolino are much more like polenta, made from a cereal porridge that is cooked and cooled until firm, then cut into small pieces and baked with a rich topping of butter and cheese. Yellow semolina (ground durum-wheat flour) even looks a bit like polenta, but it gives the dish a flavor and texture that are quite distinct from cornmeal. Gnocchi di semolino are usually served as a first course, instead of pasta, during a Sunday meal in a Roman household. It is a good dish when you have big crowds, since you can prepare it even the day before, leave it in the refrigerator covered with plastic wrap, and then just put on the butter and cheese and bake it in a hot oven where you might have a roast going. Because it holds its temperature for a while, you can set it on the table family style, with a serving spoon. Let people just take as much as they want. Traditionally, these gnocchi are cut into 1-inch rounds with a cookie cutter, but often, to avoid any waste, they are cut into squares or diamonds, which is just as good. Taleggio is a creamy cheese and I love it on this dish, but even just a Pecorino Romano will give you a nice flavorful crust.

Here is a delicious pasta recipe, another example of the Roman affinity for offal. Whether tripe (trippa) or paiata (pasta sauce made with the stomach of a suckling lamb); or oxtails braised with tomatoes, celery and carrots (coda alla vaccinara), a true Roman meal is bound to include one of them. So what’s a little chicken liver with pasta, as in this dish? The Romans love it and have been enjoying it for centuries, so why shouldn’t you?

Here is a classic pasta, as delicious as it is simple and fast. But because it is such a minimalist creation, every ingredient is of utmost importance. Use a very good authentic pecorino, one produced in Lazio (the Italian region where Rome is located), Tuscany, or Sardinia. The cheese is at its best when aged only 8 to 10 months. And grind the black peppercorns just before making the dish—I like to crush the black pepper by hand in a mortar, into coarse bits that explode with flavor as I enjoy the pasta.

One would think that fresh pasta is a northern-Italian phenomenon, and in general northerners do eat more fresh pasta than dry, whereas southern Italians consume more dry. But the Roman tradition is to have freshly made tagliatelle as a Sunday treat. And in most cases it is served with cibreo—the giblets of a freshly killed chicken.

Fresh fennel is one of my favorite companions for good Italian sausage. Here meat and vegetables are skillet-cooked, separately and then together, until their flavors are merged and concentrated. It may seem that a lot of fennel is called for, but in cooking it diminishes greatly. Fennel prepared this way is also excellent with any grilled meats; it is even good with grilled fish.

Monkfish, meaty and firm, is well suited for the fast-cooking technique of browning and braising that I use in all my seafood brodetti. This one features fresh artichokes as a foil for the sweet fish—with other bright notes from capers, wine, and a healthy dose of peperoncino. A fish dish that does not suffer from overcooking, it can be prepared even the day before. Just reheat, bringing it back to a boil. If you have any leftovers, monkfish brodetto makes a wonderful risotto the next day. Serve with some grilled country bread. I also like it with polenta.

It was on a visit to La Mozza that I discovered this simple but elegant dessert, budino alla salvia—sweet sage pudding. Fresh sage has always been one of my favorite herbs. We grow it in the garden all summer, and pot the plants and keep them in the sunroom in winter. I use salvia leaves in all kinds of savory dishes, from pasta sauces to roasts—and now I use them in desserts too. To keep its assertive flavor in check, I infuse the custard with sage, then strain out the leaves. Serve the pudding chilled—plain, or topped with a dollop of whipped cream or crème fraîche, or with a biscotto or cookie (such as Fregolotta, page 122).

Castagne al vino are a delightful reminder from Maremma that the simple pleasures of rustic life are truly irreplaceable. Roast some chestnuts, and while they are still hot, wrap them in a wine-soaked cloth . . . wait a few minutes . . . then peel and enjoy them with a glass of wine. The question is: red or white wine? The maremmani enjoy, as I do, red wine, a good Morellino. But white wine is also delicious.

Bistecca fiorentina is what everyone eats when traveling to Tuscany, but since I have taken you to Maremma, I want to share with you the way they cook and eat bistecche in Maremma. One would expect that in this cattle-grazing region, the bistecca would be from the longhorns that roam the hills and pastures there, and traditionally it was. But the Maremma is not known for tender meat, and today on the grills of the best places and homes in Maremma you will find beef from Chianina. Still, although the meat may be Chianina, the preparation still reflects Maremma. The cut of the meat is a porterhouse steak, which is similar to a T-bone steak but with a larger cross-section of the tenderloin (filet mignon) along one side of the “T.” The loin of the Chianina is enormous; hence the big pieces of meat that surround the T-bone. Choose a prime or “top choice” steak that has been aged properly for 2 to 3 weeks.

Antico peposo, a very old recipe for cubed beef, is cooked with lots of pepper and no other condiment—not even a drop of oil or any other fat—and it becomes a delightfully savory and peppery dish. The dish probably dates back to medieval times, when there was no refrigeration and meat was preserved with salt or lots of pepper and herbs. Once the meat was embedded with the pepper, it was cooked just as it was. Or with a little wine and garlic. My peposo uses only a fraction of the amount of black peppercorns that are in traditional recipes, but it will still please even the most fanatic pepper-lover: this is peppery! To balance the spiciness of the meat and mop up the sauce, you need some starch. I like to serve the peposo with one of the following: polenta, boiled or mashed potatoes, gnocchi, or just beans cooked with olive oil.

The foothills of the Apennines line the eastern part of the Maremma and provide a congenial habitat for many species of wildlife, notably wild boar. As they range the hills, foraging at different altitudes, their diet varies, from rough vegetation to earthy treasures like acorns, chestnuts, and hazelnuts. Boar is prepared in infinite ways, from curing it and making sausages, prosciutto, and salami, to braising and roasting it. As with domestic pigs, the flavor of boar meat varies according to what the animal has consumed. Part of the luck of the hunt is bagging a boar that has feasted on acorns or chestnuts rather than meager plant foods—you can taste the difference. Here in the States, boar are domestically raised, though often allowed free range like true wild boar. The meat is generally excellent, complex in flavor and surprisingly tender. It is also easily purchased, over the Internet, right from the producers or through specialty-food merchants (see Sources, page 340) but it is expensive and you can use pork tenderloins instead in this recipe (but marinate them for only half the time). If you’ve not tried boar, this recipe for tenderloins will be a tasty and easy introduction. After marinating for several hours in wine and aromatics, the filets need only brief cooking on the stovetop. Most of the work here is transforming the marinade into a beautiful, savory-sweet condiment with plump apple wedges and prunes. It is a memorable special-occasion dish.

Like Antico Peposo, page 195, this is a rugged, spicy, Maremma-style meat stew—chunks of pork marinated in wine, then browned and braised with ground fennel, peperoncino, and black olives. Traditionally, secondary cuts of pork were used for this dish, but if you prefer, pork chops can be substituted for the pork shoulder. Just keep in mind not to overcook them—use less stock, and cook for a shorter time. Serve with Braised Swiss Chard and Cannellini Beans, page 175, or polenta.