Olive

You can make this Provençal dish with whole duck, but it’s also great with legs. The covered pan-roasting does a good job of keeping the duck’s breast from drying out, while the legs become tender. It makes a lovely presentation, and the sauce is delicious. If you have only black olives, that’s fine, but add a tablespoon or two of capers to the mix. As with many (if not most) French dishes, this is best with bread and a salad.

We tend to think of grilling as the ideal way to cook many foods, but the broiler is more valuable when you want to save a marinade and the fish’s pan juices. A recipe like this one was originally cooked in a pan over an open fire, and you can certainly follow that tradition, but the broiler makes quick work of it. Though the dish is French, it’s very southern, and I might serve a simple pasta beforehand; Tomatoes Provençal (page 494) would also be in the right spirit, as would a simple salad.

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.

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.

“Russian Sauce” is probably the origin of Russian dressing, though the two no longer have much in common; still, the pickles and capers mark the relationship. This is most traditionally made with sturgeon (which is a wonderfully sturdy and flavorful fish) but can be made with any firm white fillet, from carp, catfish, or sturgeon to red snapper, sea bass, or grouper. Serve with boiled potatoes or plain white rice.

An unusual preparation, though you might not think so if it included meat. I like it best with a combination of medium-sized black olives, like Kalamatas, and large green ones, particularly the type that come from Sicily, but any combination will do. A great side dish, especially with sautéed chicken, useful too as a topping for Crostini (page 41) or—thinned if necessary—as a pasta sauce. If the olives are very, very salty—only an occasional problem—parboil them in water to cover for a few minutes before starting.

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.

A simple summer salad that is best with tomatoes that have just started to ripen. You can also toss this salad into hot or leftover pasta for a quick hot dish or pasta salad.

A crunchy mixed vegetable salad given a twist by the addition of bread. Feel free to improvise with whatever is in your garden or kitchen. The key to this salad is not the choice of vegetables but slicing them as thinly as possible. Use a mandoline if you have one.

A superrefreshing salad, great on hot summer days. If you have a mandoline, use it here, since the fennel is best when cut into thin slices. This salad can be made more substantial with cooked scallops, shrimp, or crabmeat and is also delicious with grapefruit. Peel the fruit over a bowl to catch the juices, then cut the segments between the membranes.

This North African salad will give you a wonderful new perspective on leeks. Uncooked, they are deliciously refreshing, especially when paired with tomatoes and cucumbers.

This is best when you have freshly made sauerkraut—especially a whole head, which you can sometimes find at Eastern European specialty markets. There will, of course, be times when that’s impossible, and then you must turn to packaged sauerkraut. This is not a problem as long as you steer clear of the canned stuff and look for that packed in plastic bags, containing nothing but cabbage and salt. Serve this strong, tart salad with a hearty meat dish, like “Deviled” Pork Chops (page 362), Baeckoffe of Pork and Lamb (page 399), or Carbonnade (page 385).

A Ligurian specialty, usually made with “stamped” pasta—pasta that is rolled out and then cut with dies in special designs. You can use any cut pasta for this, though perhaps it’s best with fresh pasta like malfatti (page 542). If you have Tapenade (page 604), simply stir it into any tomato sauce to get the same effect.

The key to good tapenade, not surprisingly, is good olives. I like the oil-cured kind for this, but they must not be too dried out or they become unpleasantly acrid, and no amount of olive oil can save them. So taste one before buying. (Regular canned black olives are fine too if you can’t find olives in bulk.) In Provence, considered its home, tapenade is used mostly as a spread for plain toasted bread or Crostini (page 41). But it’s also great as a dip for raw vegetables, on sandwiches of any type, or as a quick spread to put on meat or fish before roasting or after grilling or broiling. It will keep, refrigerated, for about a month; always bring back to room temperature before serving.

The most exciting pissaladière I ever had was served it the open-air market in the heart of old Nice. It was baked in a wood-burning oven a few blocks away, sent to the market by bicycle, and eaten standing up or at picnic tables shaded by huge awnings. The wedges were gently sweet and intensely salty; the crust, just a half inch thick, was perfumed with the local olive oil and was perfectly browned and crisp. It was so simple—mostly just sweet onions on a wonderful crust. You can make a wonderful pissaladière at home: just be sure to cook the onions very, very slowly.

Unlike common deviled eggs, these, usually served as a tapa, have both texture and more flavor. The shrimp and olives bring a nice saltiness to the dish, which is ideal for a picnic.

Throughout the Mediterranean, you’ll find olives already on the table when you sit down to a meal. But they’re far different from the canned olives (usually Mission) routinely—and unfortunately—sold in supermarkets here. Not only are they a variety of different types; they’re simply but wonderfully seasoned. This easy treatment is so effective that most people are shocked at the results. Use an assortment of olives if at all possible—Kalamatas, some of the good green type, tiny Niçoises, and so on—and the olives will be not only beautiful but varied. You can make this recipe in any quantity, using the same proportions.

Escarole is a big ingredient in the Italian American pantry, so one will see it frequently on an Italian American table. Escarole has always been abundant in American markets, whereas the dark-green vegetables such as chicory and broccoli rabe made their appearance much later. The usual recipe for sautéed escarole is scarola strascinata, “dragged” in the pan with garlic and oil. In this rendition, the addition of anchovies and black olives makes it more festive and gives the dish more complexity.

Cauliflower braised in tomato sauce is not a new recipe, but I had this delicious rendition, which I share with you here, at Torrisi.