Italian

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)