Sausage

In translation, arroz con pollo simply means “rice with chicken.” When I was the chef at Cafeteria, the Latin American cooks made this dish for our staff meal just about every day. Its truly authentic flavors are homey and satisfying. I prefer using whole canned tomatoes and crushing them by hand because I have more control of the texture; plus the flavor is a lot better than chopped canned tomatoes.

You can use any dried lasagna noodles in this easy no-boil method, just be sure that the noodles themselves are completely covered with the filling and sauce.

This is a great sauce, almost a universal pasta dressing, but particularly suitable for malloreddus. Because it is so good and useful, I make it in large batches and pack it in small portions for freezing. There are times when I want to make some pasta for two (or sometimes just for me), and there’s nothing better than having a small container of tomato-sausage sauce on hand to dress it.

In Calabria, as in other regions of southern Italy, there’s a general preference for dried pasta, even for baked stuffed pastas. Usually, stuffed pastas like canneloni or manicotti are formed from flat pieces of fresh pasta, topped with filling, and then rolled up to make the familiar tube shape. But with this recipe, you stuff pasta for baking as they do it in Calabria, using the dried tubular pasta called paccheri; first cook them just to soften, then spoon in a savory sausage-and-ricotta filling. Fill a big pan with the stuffed paccheri, drape them with tomato sauce and grated cheese, and bake. As with other baked pasta casseroles, you can multiply this recipe many times and make enough schiaffettoni to feed any size crowd. The individual paccheri can be stuffed and the big pan (or pans) fully assembled in advance; bake at the last minute, while your guests are being seated. And best of all, you know everyone will love it.

As the name of this traditional dish suggests, it is made from the few ingredients available to a shepherd in remote pastures. Yet, in my experience, some of the best pasta sauces in Italy come from such a limited larder of ingredients. A fine example is this dressing for rigatoni, created with a bit of sausage, dried grating cheese, fresh ricotta, peperoncino, and fresh basil. And if you toss in other fresh herbs in season, your rigatoni alla pastora will have a slightly different taste each time.

This recipe makes a wonderful tomato-and-sausage sauce for pasta. Typical of Basilicata, it is uncomplicated yet yields a complex and delicious flavor. It is important to use the best sausage, preferably a mix freshly made by a real Italian butcher. If there’s one available to you, ask for sweet, all-pork sausage, preferably a medium grind of meat with some texture, rather than a fine grind, which tends to be pasty. To save work, since you want the meat to be loose, ask for the sausage mix before it is put in the casing. As for the pasta, I recommend bucatini, which is what I first had in Basilicata. But I like spaghetti with this, too—a whole-wheat spaghetti would be especially nice.

In the dialect of the Lucani (as natives of Basilicata are known) maritare means “to wed,” and I have always thought that this wonderful soup was so named because it was customarily served at wedding celebrations. Recently, however, while doing some research, I came upon another explanation of why it is called maritata—because it weds vegetables (in the soup base) with meat (in the polpette), and with this added protein it becomes a complete and balanced one-course meal. I like both interpretations of the name and believe they’re compatible. Certainly a young couple, on the brink of their first night as newlyweds, can use this fortifying nourishment! There are many ways to prepare and serve a soup with multiple elements like this one, and you can of course play around with the recipe here. One variation is to fry the meatballs rather than poaching them. Though it takes a bit more work, it does give another layer of flavor (see my recipe for Meatballs in Broth in the Umbria chapter, page 196, for instructions on frying little meatballs for soup). Another option is to add cubes of provola to the soup just before serving. If you can get a good-quality Italian provola (mild provolone), this embellishment is superb. I’ve included instructions for this step at the end of the main recipe.

This is one of those bountiful braises that you make when you want to delight a big table of family or friends, offering them an assortment of tender meats and pasta dressed with the braising sauce. Like other slowly cooked braises, this gives you two courses from one saucepan. Serve pasta dressed with the meaty-tasting tomato sauce as a first course—there’s enough to dress 2 pounds of rigatoni. And then serve the pork, veal, and sausage as a second course. Of course, you don’t have to serve it all for the same meal. Use half the sauce to dress a pound of pasta, freeze the rest, and you have a future meal all ready to go. And after serving the ragù, take any leftover bits and pieces of meat, shred and chop them up, clean the meat from the veal-chop bone, and blend all of it in with any leftover sauce. I bet you’ll have enough sauce with meaty morsels for a lasagna or other baked pasta—yet another meal from that one big braising pan.

The Umbrian town of Norcia is, among other distinctions, so famous for the skill of its pork butchers and the quality of their products that the term norcineria throughout Italy designates a shop that purveys pork and pork specialties of the highest quality—and nothing else. This is one of the memorable pork dishes that I discovered in Umbria recently. And though there are no sausages better than those made by an Umbrian Norcino in his hometown, this will be wonderful with any good-quality sweet sausage available in yours. The name—Sausages in the Skillet with Grapes—describes the ingredients and cooking method perfectly. Just keep in mind that the cooking here is slow and gentle, not high-temperature grilling as one usually does with sausages.

In Lombardy, where it’s often cold and foggy, cabbage grows well in the fertile soil and is used in many dishes. The common type here, as all across northern Italy, is the Savoy cabbage—the name suggests its probable origins in neighboring Piemonte, which was once ruled by the Casa Savoia (“House of Savoy”). The loose, wrinkled leaves of the Savoy are great for stuffing, because they’re easy to separate and roll. And they’re delicious in this wonderful dish, mellow and tender but still sturdy enough to hold the sausage-and-vegetable filling. Cabbage rolls are very much part of my culinary heritage. My family grew Savoy cabbage, and I grew up on sarme, the Istrian interpretation of stuffed cabbage. Sarme are a more sour preparation, since the cooking on the eastern edge of Italy had many Slavic and Eastern European influences. The polpette di verza of Lombardy are sweeter (though the wine in this recipe provides a nice balance). Whatever the differences, I love all kinds of stuffed cabbage, and love to serve them at special family occasions. These polpette make a fine appetizer as well as a main course. I serve the rolls in a warm bowl, so the sauce can be scooped up with each bite. For a main dish, accompany them with Riso alla Lombarda (page 43), polenta, or mashed potatoes.

Our microwave polenta technique puts an end to nonstop stirring.

This corn bread stuffing is a stroke of genius. It's so easy, you'll be making it far more often than once a year for Thanksgiving! Shelley Wiseman, author of Just Tacos, knows a thing or two about corn—and not just in tortillas—and she decided to skip the process of drying the cubes of corn bread in the oven. That alone is a huge time-saver. To enliven the corn bread, she balances the flavor punch of chorizo with the sweetness of onions and corn kernels. When it comes time to bake it in a dish (not inside the turkey), she forgoes the old process of covering the stuffing—which allows steam to soften the dried bread—because the bread isn't dry. She simply bakes it uncovered, so that the top gets golden with crispy brown edges, while the interior stays moist.

This streamlined version of a favorite Malaysian street food noodle dish, char kway teow, substitutes Spanish chorizo for the Chinese sausage sometimes used. The smoked paprika that flavors the chorizo may be far from traditional, but it adds another layer of depth to this seductive stir-fry of rice noodles with shrimp, egg, and jicama. There's just enough chile paste for a mild buzz of heat, but not so much that your mouth is on fire. If the jicama seems like a weird Mexican-Malaysian fusion idea, then you probably don't know that jicama is used in Asia, where it's known as Chinese turnip or potato. Its sweet crunch is reminiscent of fresh water chestnuts. Don't expect a supersaucy dish, but rest assured there's enough sauce to coat everything.

PAT You won't find a collard green—or a green of any kind, for that matter—that Gina hasn't mastered and found a dozen ways to cook. She's queen of the twists on greens. The idea for this particular twist came from stuffed cabbage with a vinegary red sauce—but we think this is even better than that recipe. Don't you?

Make or buy a savory cornbread to use in this luxurious stuffing; the kind you use will determine how much broth you'll need to moisten it.

Start breakfast by making a potato pancake, then cover it with sausage, eggs, and cheese and bake until puffed and golden.

The addition of airy brioche gives this aromatic spiced stuffing a less dense texture than most holiday casseroles.

This hands-on French feast of vegetables and cuts of meat boiled in a savory broth is traditionally served in courses. It begins with the bone marrow on toast, then follows with the broth and the meats and vegetables. Feel free to serve it all at once, providing plenty of toasted bread and savory condiments for dipping.

Use John Currence's classic Southern gravy for smothering biscuits , with or without the fried chicken.