Italian

Pollo alla cacciatora is served in many regions of Italy, but when you see lots of fresh rosemary and tomatoes it is a dead giveaway—you know it is from Tuscany. And in this case the dish is typical of Maremma, straightforward and elementary, with nothing more than good chicken, good tomatoes, and fresh rosemary to make it delicious. This dish ought to be done in advance, as it gets better as it sits. Though it is delicious served as is with just some crusty bread, I especially love it with polenta. And when it is too hot to cook polenta, some tubular pasta, like rigatoni, will do just fine. If you have some left over, just pluck the meat off the bones and save it for another meal, to dress pasta or make a risotto with it.

As with the preceding duck recipe, either a whole rabbit or rabbit pieces can be used for this sauce. If you’re getting a whole rabbit, ask the butcher to cut it into eight or ten pieces, or do it yourself, just cutting between the joints. (If you have my book Lidia’s Family Table, look at the photos on page 321 to see how to cut up a rabbit.) If you can find rabbit legs, hind and/or front, they would be even better for this recipe. As with the duck, the legs have more meat, are easier to handle, and cost less. Serve this sauce with pappardelle, following the procedures in the duck recipe, or with gnocchi, polenta, or dry pasta.

When duck is braised for sauce in Maremma, pappardelle is the pasta of choice. Therefore, I encourage you to make your own fresh pappardelle, following my recipe here. (Of course, the sauce will be delicious on other fresh pastas, gnocchi, or polenta; and pappardelle is great with other dressings too!) I also recommend using duck legs for this dish rather than a whole duck, as I think they’re tastier and make a better sauce. If you don’t see packaged duck legs, ask your butcher to special-order them for you.

Tortelli are ravioli by another name—a square, filled pasta. And though they vary greatly, like all pastas, tortelli often are filled with fresh ricotta and spinach or other greens, herbs, or vegetables. In Maremma, where carnivorous appetites rule, such a meatless approach is not typical. As you’ll find in this set of recipes, tortelli maremmani have meat inside and outside—and lots of it. Fried chopped chicken livers plump up the tortelli, in addition to ricotta and spinach. Once cooked, the tortelli are dressed with a typical ragù maremmano, made with three chopped meats slowly cooked in tomatoes. My friend Alma likes best boar, chicken, and pork, but here I call for veal, pork, and sausage, because I find that combination comes close to the complexity of the boar. Of course, if you can get boar, by all means use it. This is a great pasta, and worth all the stirring and stuffing. However, it is not necessary to make everything here and put the ingredients together in just one way. The components of tortelli maremmani give many options for delicious meals (and convenient advance preparation). For instance, it’s fine to make the filling and the pasta for the tortelli and leave the ragù for another day. You can sauce your tortelli simply with sage butter, pages 49–50, or just shower them with Tuscan olive oil and Pecorino Toscano. On the other hand, go right to the ragù recipe—skip the tortelli—and make this marvelous sauce to dress any pasta, fresh or dry, or polenta or gnocchi. Indeed, the ragù recipe makes enough for two or more meals. Toss a couple of cups of ragù with spaghetti for a fabulous (and fast) supper one night, and freeze the rest. It will still be perfect whenever you do get a chance to roll and fill those plump tortelli maremmani.

This skillet pasta is the epitome of good everyday Italian cooking. It is fast—everything, including the dried gramigna pasta, cooks in less than 10 minutes. The ingredients are right out of the pantry and fridge. And when you put them all together—the textures and tastes are in perfect balance. When dishes are so simple, every ingredient is very important. Here the feel and texture of curly gramigna pasta plays an important role, so do try to find it (see Sources, page 340). Other pastas, such as elbows, shells, or small pennette, will be delicious, but gramigna is used in Maremma, and I love it.

Swiss chard is a vegetable that is much appreciated in Maremma. Even though it is readily available in most supermarkets, it is not much used in the States. I love it, and suggest that whenever you are thinking spinach you should think of substituting Swiss chard. It usually comes in a bunch tied around the stalks. Look for young, tender bright-green leaves and thin stalks. This recipe, cooked with cannellini beans, makes almost a complete meal. In Maremma, this dish is served with grilled meats. I love grilled sausages with it, but I also like it topped with a poached egg, a slab of grilled crusty Tuscan bread, and a drizzle of olive oil—it makes a great lunch. This dish is good just off the stove, but it gets better when it rests a bit and is reheated. It will keep in the refrigerator for a few days, and also freezes very well.

Crespelle (Italian for “crêpes”) are easy, delicious, and versatile. You can fill and bake them with almost any stuffing. Here’s a favorite of mine, crespelle filled with a creamy mushroom ragù, as they do it in Maremma. Many wonderful dishes can be made using crespelle in place of pasta. If you have all the ingredients for a filling for lasagna, for example, but do not want to make pasta, crêpes are ideal.

This hearty vegetarian soup gets superb flavor and texture from the long-cooking chickpeas and dried and fresh mushrooms. But the secret to the great taste is the paste (pestata) of aromatic vegetables and herbs, ground in the food processor. Before adding it to the soup however, you give the pestata even more flavor by browning it in a skillet—which makes it, in culinary Italian, a soffritto. As you will see in the coming pages, this pestata/soffritto step is used in many Maremma recipes, in sauces and stews as well as soups. In the country, such a soup is often served with grilled bread, making a whole meal. Adding rice or small pasta to the soup pot during the final 10 minutes of cooking is another way to enhance it. Or drop some good Italian sausages into soup for the last 20 minutes of cooking. Slice them right into the soup, or serve the sausages separately as a second course.

Acquacotta literally means “cooked water,” a traditional term for a soup of just a few ingredients cooked in boiling water. But the pale name in no way reflects the savor and satisfaction of this vegetable soup. It has great depth of flavor, and when served Alma’s way, with a poached egg and country bread in the bowl, it is a complete meal. In country fashion, Alma cracks a raw egg right into each portion of hot soup and inverts another bowl on top, as a cover. You have to wait (mouth watering) for a minute or two before removing the top bowl, to find a beautifully cooked egg. Here I transfer the soup to a skillet and poach the eggs over low heat, to be sure they have cooked thoroughly. Since this soup is so quick, inexpensive, and nourishing, local women would make it often, especially when extra farmhands came to help to harvest the grapes and olives and to work the land.

Cornmeal cookies are a favorite all over northern Italy: the Veneto has its zaletti, in Friuli we have gialetti. In Piemonte, you will find crumiri, piped into distinctive crescent-moon shapes. They are deliciously crumbly and just sweet enough.

There’s no way to exaggerate Italians’ deep love of coffee, and nowhere is this more true than in Piemonte, where the caffès are filled at every hour. And however many tazzine of potent espresso one might have gulped down during the day, a true Piedmontese will likely choose a coffee-flavored dessert after supper, be it tiramisù, gelato, or this light zabaglione laced with dark-roasted coffee. This recipe is simple and delicious, whether freshly whipped and warm, or enriched with whipped cream and chilled. Serve with biscotti, crumiri, or over the Torta di Nocciole (on page 158).

Cardi are popular all over Italy, but especially in Sicily and in Piemonte, at opposite ends of the country. In Sicily it is cooked as a side dish (contorno) and served with pasta, whereas in Piemonte it is used in soups and stuffings and dipped in bagna cauda. In truffle season, all cardi dishes are served with shavings of white truffles. The prized cardoon of Piemonte—essential if serving with truffle—is the cardo gobbo di Nizza, the tender white cardoon that never sees light. Here is the baked cardoon gratinate I prepare at home with the conventionally grown cardoons available in American markets. The dish is delightful as is, but if you happen to have a white truffle lying around, give it a shave over the gratinate before serving.

Agnolotti del plin, or agnolotti with a pinch, is the quintessential Piedmontese stuffed pasta, served in starred restaurants and the simplest of trattorias throughout the year. But if you happen to be in the Alba area in the late autumn, don’t fail to order the agnolotti, because every eating establishment will be shaving white truffle over them. And when blanketed with white Alba truffles, this always delicious dish is raised to an even greater height of flavor. In Piedmontese homes, agnolotti del plin is often made with small amounts of any roast-meat leftovers, whether beef or pork, poultry or game, chopped and seasoned to serve as an impromptu filling for golden tajarin dough. For big occasions (and in restaurants, of course), meat is roasted specifically for the filling, as in the recipe here. But if you happen to have one or more kinds of tasty leftover roast, by all means use it (you’ll need a couple of cups of shredded meat, trimmed of gristle, to make a full batch). And even if you don’t have a white truffle, a simple dressing of sage-infused butter is a lovely complement to the flavors of the meat filling and the rich egg pasta.

When you have a white truffle, enjoy it just as they do in Alba, with golden tajarin. If fresh truffle is unavailable, packaged truffle butter makes a nice dressing for the pasta too (see Sources, page 340). Should you have no truffle at all, tajarin with only butter and Grana Padano or Parmigiano-Reggiano will be simply luxurious, if not quite ethereal.

Bagna cauda is one of Piemonte’s best-known dishes. The name means “warm bath,” and that’s what it is: a sauce of garlic, butter, oil, and anchovy heated in a deep earthenware container set on the table over a little flame, like a fondue pot. Also on the table are arrayed a great variety of cut vegetables, raw and cooked, to be dipped in the piping-hot sauce, eaten, and savored. In Piemonte, bagna cauda will always include some of the fabulous vegetables for which the region is renowned, such as cardi gobbi from Nizza Monferrato, and the gorgeous long peppers of Carmagnola. At home I serve an assortment of seasonal vegetables: You’ll find some suggestions on the next page. This is a great starter on the table or for a buffet. To make more sauce for a crowd, simply multiply the ingredient amounts given in the recipe.

I love chutneys, for both their concentrated flavor and the convenience. You make them and store them, and whenever you want that special treat you can just pull them from the fridge or pantry. All you need is a spoonful to enjoy the essence of whatever ingredients you put into them. Cunja is just such a treasured condiment from Piemonte. Quince is a primary ingredient (as it is in cotognata, another traditional Italian chutney), but cunja incorporates the indigenous flavors of late autumn in Piemonte: the local San Martino pears, the mosto of pressed Nebbiolo grapes, and its famed hazelnuts. Though these particular ingredients will probably not be in your market, my recipe produces a thoroughly delicious and long-lasting chutney with much of the layered complexity of cunja. In place of cotto mosto, the cooking liquid here is bottled Concord-grape juice (always made from concentrate); organic juice is highly recommended. Unfortunately, we can’t get small sweet San Martino pears in the United States. These are the last pears to be harvested, in early November, at the same time as the Feast of San Martino—hence their name. Our Seckel pears are an excellent alternative, and Granny Smith apples will also work well. Packed in jars and refrigerated, this will keep for a couple of months. As I explain, cunja is meant to be enjoyed with a creamy Piedmontese cheese, but I serve it with pork roast and other meats. I am sure you will find many delicious uses for it.

Antipasti are, for me, the best part of a Piedmontese meal. At any family gathering (and in restaurants as well), the platters of different antipasti just never stop coming. And at some point in the procession, roasted peppers stuffed with tuna will arrive at the table. The combination of sweet, meaty peppers and well-seasoned oil-cured tuna is always delightful. In Piemonte, cooks are discriminating about the peppers they roast, and most sought are those from Carmagnola, a town in the countryside south of Torino. Carmagnola peppers are justly famous, for wonderful flavor as well as their vivid colors and distinctive shapes, like the corno di bue (ox horn) and trottola (spinning top). Carmagnola also is well known for il coniglio grigio di Carmagnola—the gray rabbit from Carmagnola—considered to be one of the best in Italy. Here in the States, any fresh, meaty sweet bell-type peppers are suitable—different colors make a nice presentation. And peppers are always best roasted and peeled at home, though a jar of roasted red peppers can be substituted if you are short on time. (If you have no peppers at all, this tuna filling is delicious on crostini or crackers—it makes a world-class tuna-fish sandwich too.)