Side

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?

This gratin of fennel wedges and strips of prosciutto drizzled with butter and topped with Grana Padano or Parmigiano-Reggiano, then baked until golden, is rich, aromatic, and irresistible. It’s also quite convenient, since you can set up the baking dish hours ahead, keep it refrigerated, then pop it into the oven just before dinner. You can make this without prosciutto or substitute bacon, and it will be delicious, but it’s even better with prosciutto. Keep in mind that the cooking of prosciutto and cheese concentrates the saltiness, but the sweetness of the fennel brings it all into balance. Serve hot for best results.

This is one of those simple recipes loaded with flavor that I am sure you will make part of your cooking repertoire. The fennel’s sweetness and tinge of licorice are concentrated by the braising and balanced by the acidity and the saltiness of the capers. Almost all of the moisture needed in cooking comes from the fennel itself, rather than from other liquids, concentrating the vegetable’s natural flavors.

The following is a simple recipe that will give you all the sensations of fresh fennel as the vendor would have it.

Everyone loves roasted potatoes, and here they are tossed with slivered artichokes (already skillet-cooked with onion and garlic), lots of fresh oregano, and extra-virgin olive oil. It is a completely vegetarian dish full of flavor that will transport your table to the Seven Hills. Serve with grilled fish or meat, especially grilled lamb chops. Or simply turn this dish into a crispy baked treat by adding some shredded young Pecorino Romano, spreading it over the potatoes and artichokes in the last 5 minutes of baking.

This dish accents the meatiness of the artichoke. Braised slowly with the tomatoes, it develops a harmonious flavor, sweet with a refreshing licorice finish. Since this recipe calls for a lot of artichokes, I make it when they are plentiful. Serve with a piece of grilled meat or fish, or make some extra to spread on bread as an appetizer. Use as a dressing for pasta, or to make a risotto. These braised artichokes can be frozen, so make a big batch to pull out when unexpected guests come by.

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.

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.

Although it is great in a salad—sweet and bitter at the same time—in the cold winter months radicchio trevisano is better cooked, and has a more resilient texture. Traditionally paired with speck—boneless, smoked prosciutto—radicchio makes a great risotto (see page 115) and a great sauce for pasta. In those dishes, the radicchio serves a secondary role as a distinctive flavoring, but when baked this way, it is the main protagonist. I enjoy baked radicchio by the mouthful, savoring its taste and texture, sweet, bitter, and crunchy. The best variety for baking is the long thin radicchio trevisano or spadone (as shown in the photos), but the small round heads most often found in the supermarket or the kind with long but wide leaves (resembling purple romaine lettuce) are also delicious baked this way. Serve as an antipasto or a vegetable course, over soft or baked polenta.

Squash is not one of the most popular vegetables, but I love it and love cooking with it. It is nutritious, versatile, and delicious. Northern Italy consumes more zucca—winter squash—than southern Italy, especially in the areas near Modena in Emilia-Romagna, and Padova in the Veneto. This is a great side dish or appetizer. Traditionally, the zucca is fried before it is marinated, as I do here, but the dish is also delicious when made with grilled or boiled zucca. I recommend butternut squash, but acorn, Hubbard, and other varieties will work as well.

This soup is common in all of the regions hugging the Adriatic, where fish trimmings of one sort or another are always available to cook into a light, flavorful broth. We had it often when we lived in Istria, whenever someone in the family was not feeling well, for its supposed restorative powers. And although children sometimes disdain “fishy”-tasting food, I recall vividly savoring this broth, which had the taste of the sea but was sweet and elegant too. In those days, we would take the fish heads and tails out of the soup pot and pluck the hidden morsels of whitefish meat off the bones. In the version that follows, you’ll strain the bones out of the broth and briefly cook some meaty (but boneless) trimmings just before serving the soup.

Turnips play an important role in Friulian cuisine, especially in the form called brovada—turnips that have fermented for several months, as a way to preserve them and to develop a pronounced and appetizing acidity. Brovada is incorporated in many dishes, grated and braised with sausages and other meats, in soups, or just as a tangy and healthful vegetable. This recipe, using fresh turnips, produces a side dish in the same vein as brovada, with distinctive acidity, well suited to accompany all sorts of cured and fresh meats. It is full of typical Friulian flavors, but you do not have to wait months for the turnip to ferment!

Gnocchi in Friuli are made with the same potato-and-flour dough as the round, ridged gnocchi made elsewhere in Italy, the kind we are most familiar with. But Friuli-style gnocchi have a couple of tempting distinctions. First, you’ll find that their shape is different—they are smooth, slender cylinders that are actually faster and easier to form than round gnocchi. This shape gives you an option in finishing the gnocchi: you can boil, drain, and dress them just as they come out of the cooking pot, or, after they’re boiled and drained, you can gently fry them in butter until golden and crisp on the outside—and then dress them—having gained another layer of flavor and texture. Second—and unique to gnocchi and other pastas in Friuli—is the dressing of melted butter, sugar, cinnamon, and smoked dried ricotta. This melding of sweet, salty, spicy, and smoky may seem exotic at first but will quickly captivate you. Milk products like ricotta are frequently preserved by smoking in Friuli, and smoked ricotta (drier than fresh) is a common household product. It is available here now, but if you can’t find it, use ricotta salata as a good alternative (see Sources, page 340). And if you have a smoker, you can coldsmoke the ricotta salata, for a flavor closer to what is enjoyed in Friuli. You can dress gnocchi friulani with other sauces—basil pesto, tomato—or serve with another regional dish like Beef Goulash, page 58.