Onion

One of the mistakes I see many cooks making is automatically reaching for a can of chicken broth whenever a recipe calls for a bit of stock or a sauce needs an additional 1/3 cup of liquid. But the strong flavors of a broth—and the saltiness of canned broth in particular—can often change the flavor direction from where you want to go. And it’s an unnecessarily expensive and sometimes wasteful habit, if you only use a bit of the can and discard the rest. Instead, I encourage you to adopt one of my favorite thrifty kitchen practices: making your own simple vegetable broth when you are cooking, using it as a multi-purpose “moistening agent” for a host of dishes.

This is a classic cold sauce for boiled meats, poultry, and fish, but I find wonderful new uses for it all the time.

Poached veal tongue is one of the ingredients in the classical Italian dish bollito misto, boiled mixed meats. It is one of my favorite dishes, but even without the other four or five meats I enjoy the poached tongue. The brining somewhat cures the meat and makes it retain the lively pinkish color throughout.

Pork shoulder is delicious braised as well as roasted. Salsa Genovese provides a wonderful sauce as well as a large amount of meat—indeed, this traditional Neapolitan Sunday dish gives you two options, for two different meals. In the custom of “Sunday sauces,” the freshly cooked pork and its braising sauce are served separately the first time: the sauce with the meat extracted is tossed with pasta for a first course, and the meat is sliced and served as a main course. (In Italian and Italian-American homes, these might be different courses or on the table at the same time.) Whatever sauce and meat are left from the first feast are then combined into a meaty sauce to dress pasta another day. A 5-pound pork shoulder cooked, in my recipe, with 5 pounds of chopped onions will give you plenty of meat and sauce to enjoy all these ways. Braise a bigger shoulder butt for even more leftovers—just be sure to buy plenty of onions: a 7-pound pork roast gets 7 pounds of onions!

Pork shoulders (also called butts or Boston butts) are terrific roasts, in my opinion, more delicious than pork loin and definitely less expensive. With a nice layer of fat on top, a good proportion of fat through the muscle, and lots of connective tissue, the roasted meat has wonderful flavor and soft, moist texture. It’s easy to roast—you don’t need to erect a foil tent for it—and the shoulder-blade bone, which adds flavor and speeds roasting, is simple to remove when you’re serving the meat. (It is also easy to braise, as you will find in the following recipe for Salsa Genovese). Shoulder roasts range from 4 to 8 pounds, bone-in, or larger. This procedure will work for any-size roast, though the vegetable and seasoning amounts are for a 5-to-7-pound shoulder, the size you’ll usually find in the butcher’s case. To feed a big crowd, ask the butcher to cut a larger shoulder for you, or cook two smaller roasts in one very big roasting pan. Be sure to increase the vegetables, seasonings, and cooking liquids proportionally with your meat. Some of the other choices you have with this easy roast: should you mash all the roasting-pan vegetables into the sauce—the simplest method—or cut and caramelize them to serve as a side dish? Or a bit of each? (See page 344 for more information.) It’s up to you. Do you want to glaze the roast? I’ve got a good maple syrup glaze to share—see recipe that follows.

I know that “boiled” anything is not a popular concept these days (one reason I call this “poached”), but don’t disdain or neglect this elemental dish. It is still one of the easiest and most satisfying one-pot meals we can give our families. It’s also faster to make than ever: the big birds I buy—plump, meaty, and best when organically raised—are thoroughly cooked, tender, and moist after barely 45 minutes in the broth. When you really want to make it festive, substitute a capon for the chicken. And with markets that offer an unprecedented array of produce and herbs in all seasons, we can surround the chicken with a greater variety of vegetables than our great-great-grandmothers ever had at one time. In this recipe, I’ve loaded the pot with seven hearty and aromatic vegetables (almost 5 pounds’ worth), but you can certainly choose others or vary the amounts. Just cut enough vegetables overall to give everyone a bountiful serving, drizzling the meat and vegetables with some extra-virgin olive oil and a few grains of sea salt to make it complete. But I also hope you’ll top each portion, as I do, with a dollop of salsa verde, a traditional condiment for boiled foods. The bright, acidic flavor and fresh, uncooked texture of the finely chopped salsa are a perfect counterpoint to the poached meat and vegetables—it makes a meal of boiled chicken exciting as well as comforting.

Most of the time when you buy a whole chicken, the packet of neck, gizzards, and chicken liver tucked in the cavity will leave you wondering what to do with them. Well, these are some of the best-tasting parts. So, packet by packet, collect and freeze the necks and gizzards for a good chicken soup, and the livers for this quick and delicious dish. Quickly sautéed chicken livers and slowly caramelized onions are such natural complements in taste and texture that they’re always a welcome supper dish in our house. The kids are a bit finicky about this dish, but I prepare it when Grandma, Giovanni, and I are at home. There’s nothing fancy about my version—though I do embellish the onions with a sweet-and-sour finish of vinegar and golden raisins. Chicken livers need a bit of attention—thorough trimming and rinsing, and fast cooking in a small amount of oil—and they’ll be crispy on the outside and tender on the inside.

Brodo means “soup” in Italian, and brodetti are savory, soupy preparations that usually refer to fish. A brodetto is uncomplicated, quick, and very delicious— a preparation that you can use for many kinds of seafood. For this recipe I’ve chosen skate, an ocean fish that some of you may not be familiar with. It is immensely popular in Europe and one of my lifelong favorites. Fortunately, it is now widely available here, reasonably priced, and, when fresh, as sweet and luscious as lobster. It is particularly well suited for a brodetto, having naturally gelatinous flesh and bones, which enhance the richness and viscosity of the sauce. If you can, buy skate with the center cartilage, which is how I like it; see box on skate, below.

You have certainly played around with fresh basil, particularly with pesto. Here the flavor is more subtle in its cooked form.

Lemon is such an everyday flavoring that we forget how unique it can make a dish.

Here you prepare the tomatoes and sauté the base of onions and garlic in the exact same way as in the previous recipe, but the final sauce is unique. First you soften the eggplant chunks in the pan before adding the tomatoes. Then you cook the vegetables covered for a long time, so the chunks break down even more. The aim is to soften the eggplant so much that it almost melts into the tomatoes—which explains the traditional name for this sauce, melanzana affogata: literally, “suffocated eggplant.” The eggplant does not disappear, though, either in flavor or texture, I assure you. If you love eggplant as much as I do, you will want to make this sauce—and plenty of it.

About half the tomato plants I put in our garden beds each summer are plum tomatoes, mainly Italian varieties but also some of the old-fashioned American “heirlooms” that are being revived. Of course, New York is not Naples, and our San Marzano and Roma tomatoes don’t absorb the intense sunlight that they would in Italy, but with my mother’s careful tending (and the kids’ attention too), the plants are prolific and the tomatoes big and sweet. When they ripen—by the bushel, it seems—we make these sauces, one with just tomatoes and the other with tomatoes and eggplant. They are simple sauces, mostly the primary vegetables and big “bouquets” of fresh-cut basil branches (and olive oil, onion, garlic, and peperoncino, naturally). Yet they have a freshness and intensity that are distinct from any sauce made with canned tomatoes, even the finest San Marzano tomatoes. We make both of these in large quantities, in part because the plants are so productive (and Grandma won’t let anything go to waste), but mostly because they are so delicious and versatile. I put them on pasta, eggs, meats, and other vegetables. They are key components in some of my favorite summer creations, including the vegetable lasagna and skillet gratinate that you will find elsewhere in this chapter. And I freeze as much of both sauces as I can—they keep for months and retain their fresh, summery flavor. It’s a joy to cook with them in December or January!