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This is a traditional favorite down here. We try to use female crabs, but you can use either male or female.

This is the butter version of the Raw Olive Oil dressing for pasta on page 107. I make it at least four times a week, whenever Lorenzo and perhaps some of his cousins want “cheesy pasta” or gnocchi.

Though I’m reluctant to use out-of-season, commercially produced fresh tomatoes in a sauce, tomatoes from hothouses are a decent alternative. I sometimes dice up such a tomato for a quick skillet sauce, where the texture and color of the flesh are enjoyable, giving a dish acidity and freshness. A good example is the Sauce of Anchovies, Capers, and Fresh Tomatoes on page 91. Here is an even simpler one, for which a ripe market tomato will do, even in winter. Try this simple sauce with Shrimp and Tomato Ravioli (page 182), or tagliatelle, or capellini.

On occasion, I cook a pasta that I want to dress so simply that I do not even take down a skillet, especially if the pasta is a fresh pasta rich in flavor, such as all-egg pasta, chestnut pasta, walnut pasta, or whole-wheat pasta. For those days when you need simplicity in your life but still want flavor and elegance, this approach is perfect.

What’s wrong with zucchini in a sandwich? Since my mother made these all the time for my brother and me, I’ve always considered it a perfectly normal idea. So, when Joe and Tanya were little, I’d make them each a lovely sandwich of a crusty roll filled with egg-battered zucchini strips for lunch at school. Years later, they confessed to me that they were ashamed to take such a peculiar sandwich out of their lunchboxes—so they threw out the zucchini before other kids could see it! Now, of course, they love the combination of crisp bread and moist, flavorful zucchini, and regret all the empty rolls they had to swallow. I tell Olivia, Lorenzo, and Miles to eat whatever they like, and forget about what other kids think.

The enormous residual heat of polenta is sufficient, as the saying goes, “to cook an egg.” Do just that to make this treat for breakfast or brunch.

Fish cooked with beans is traditional fare in Tuscany, and this basic skate brodetto can easily become a hearty one-dish meal with the simple addition of cannellini.

Simple fried skate was a supper treat when I was growing up, and it is still one of my family’s favorites of all fried seafoods. . . .

If you have leftover poached chicken, the moist meat makes a wonderful warm salad, with raisins and pine nuts and a lively, sweet dressing (similar to the Cooked Carrot Salad with Pine Nuts and Golden Raisins, page 45). Three cups of dressed chicken would serve 3 or 4.

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.

This recipe will seem long to you, but read it through once or twice and it will become very clear that all we are doing is stuffing a piece of meat, roasting it, and making gravy to serve it with. That’s something I’m sure you have done any number of times—only in this case it is a breast of veal, which will yield delicious results. Breast of veal—bone-in breast specifically—is another wonderful meat cut that I hope you come to love as much as I do. Like the preceding shoulder cuts, it has a good deal of connective tissue, bones, and cartilage, which contribute to the flavor and texture of the meat, especially during long cooking. Because it comes from young animals, the ribs in the breast are just developing: there’s lots of soft cartilage, and you can just pull out the ribs after cooking, so serving and slicing are convenient. Stuffing the breast is the fun part. The muscle layers easily separate and hold a generous amount of savory filling; then, when it’s cooked and sliced, the cross sections of meat and stuffing make a beautiful presentation. It looks like an eye, with the meat as the lids. If you’ve tried any of the other roasts in this chapter, the procedure here will be familiar: covered roasting for tenderness and flavor, dry roasting for deep color and crisp textures—and developing a great sauce at the same time. The only difficulty you may find with this recipe is getting a nice big piece of veal breast, preferably the tip cut. It’s not always easy for me either, as you’ll understand when you read the box and study the technique photos here and on page 357. But if we all keep asking our butchers for veal-breast tip cuts, they’ll get the message—we want those excellent, traditional cuts of meat, and we want to stuff them ourselves!