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Corn is a nice addition to minestra—it adds texture and sweetness. It is also a good addition to other vegetable soups, such as fresh fennel, zucchini, or chicory and white bean.

Cook rice just before serving to get the consistency of soup you like: 1/4 cup of rice per quart of base for a lighter minestra, and up to 1/2 cup of rice for a hefty and hearty minestra.

I can still hear the staccato clack-clack-clack of my grandmother’s cleaver on a wooden board as she chopped the pestata, the fine paste of pork fat, garlic, and rosemary, that gave so much flavor to her rich minestra. Occasionally, she would pause and hand me the cleaver: I’d dip it in the boiling soup pot, already full of beans and potatoes, and watch the tiny specks of fat whirl into the broth. After a few moments I’d hand the cleaver back to my nonna, and instantly she’d be chopping again, the hot blade literally melting the thick fat, while the aroma of garlic and pork and beans and rosemary filled the kitchen.... Precious memories! But today I make pestata in the food processor in about 10 seconds! In most ways, however, this minestra is just like my grandmother’s. It cooks for a long time—give it 3 full hours if you can—steadily drawing flavor from pork bones and a soffritto of onion and tomato, and slowly reducing in the soup pot. You’ll have 4 quarts of minestra base, to finish with any of the additions I suggest here, or with other vegetables or grains. Long-grain white rice or small pasta can be added to almost any variation for a denser minestra. For a thicker, smooth consistency, remove some of the beans (a third to a half) before adding the finishing vegetables; purée them, and stir back into the pot for the final cooking.

Both lentils and pasta absorb liquid from the soup base, so add water from the beginning and more during cooking to get the consistency you like.

Try this with poached garlic purée too.

Winter squash and chestnuts are a wonderful combination with this base, adding nutty and sweet flavors and hearty texture. Any firm winter squash is suitable. Use fresh chestnuts or packaged peeled chestnuts (sold frozen or freeze-dried). If using fresh chestnuts, see my peeling method below.

Poached garlic lends its lovely flavor to the soup, and then everything gets a quick whirl in the food processor, producing a light, creamy soup—without cream. Add some crunch to this with Cheesy Crostini (page 60).

This soup is nice without the addition of garlic purée, marvelous with it. If you like, add short shreds of Savoy cabbage in place of some of the cauliflower, or make Savoy-cabbage soup with poached garlic purée instead.

You can make a cup or a gallon of delicious soup by cooking rice in the soup base: multiply or divide this formula as needed. If you like the lighter consistency, use 1/4 cup of uncooked rice per quart of base; for a denser soup, use 1/3 cup. Don’t start cooking the rice more than 15 minutes before serving, though, since the grains continue to expand and absorb broth even off the heat. Serve immediately after the rice is cooked.

Make soup with any of the greens (and reds) in the chicory-endive family, including the various kinds of radicchio now in the markets, escarole, curly endive (or frisée), or Belgian endive, as well as unrelated leafy vegetables such as Swiss chard, spinach, or arugula. The procedure is the same, though cooking times will vary.

It is so simple to transform a hard, homely celery root into a lovely salad with delicate taste and texture. Just drop the big root—a softball-sized unpeeled round—into a big pot of water, and let it cook for an hour or more. This technique retains and mellows the root’s wonderful flavor, and makes it easy to peel and cut it up too. Dress this simply, or take the salad in a different direction (see variations).

I love custards—when they are properly baked, that is, so each spoonful feels like velvet and truly melts on the tongue, releasing all its flavors. This is one of the most basic pleasures of eating, one that my family enjoys and that I want to share with you. Here is a custard that has everything: lots of the flavor of fresh mushrooms, dried porcini, sage, garlic, and leeks, all concentrated and deepened in the skillet, and a creamy custard that holds all these flavors in suspension. When a spoonful of this melts on your tongue, you’ll understand why I love custards. Serve it as a first course at a special dinner, or as the centerpiece of a holiday brunch. This recipe is for eight small custards and is easily multiplied to make more. The recipe details the important steps in making any custard, so, if you haven’t made one particularly successfully before, pay special attention. For uniform baking, I recommend that you use identical molds to bake up a batch, if possible. If you don’t have any, I encourage you to buy a set of inexpensive 1/2-cup ceramic molds—get eight or a dozen; either a small shallow soufflé shape or the taller traditional custard cup is fine. You’ll use them forever, I hope.

These small frittate make a wonderful appetizer cut in wedges and served at room temperature. Or serve one per person as a nice lunch dish. We always thought they were best made in the springtime, when nettles, fennel fronds, young shoots of wild asparagus, or ramps could be gathered in the fields. But if you are more city-bound, you can infuse the eggs with fresh thyme leaves, parsley, and chives, which you can get year-round.

I have literally grown up on zucchini prepared in this simple way—sliced into thin strips, dipped in egg, and fried. It was one of my favorite vegetables when I was little, and quite often my mother made our lunch sandwiches with the strips too, for us to take to school. (It’s still a great sandwich; see page 23.) Crispy and sweet and soft at the same time, the strips are delicious warm or at room temperature, with just a sprinkle of salt—as I serve them to my grand-kids—or dressed with capers and lemon juice, for adult tastes. Rolled up and secured with toothpicks, these are a great finger food for a party—a preferred morsel for martini drinkers, I’ve noticed. They’re also a delicious side dish for grilled meats and fish. At summer suppers, I put a platter of roll-ups in the middle of the table, where everybody at any time can spear one with a fork.

Here’s a welcoming dish, delicious and eye-catching.

Though it cooks for only 15 minutes, this tomato sauce gets loads of flavor from both the tonno and the olio of your marinated tuna. But you don’t want just to boil the tuna and tomatoes together: it is essential to add the fish, the oil, and all the other ingredients to the big skillet at the right time. The technique of skillet sauces, and how to finish pasta and sauce together, is explained in depth on pages 89 to 93. For this chunky sauce, I recommend a short dried pasta with lots of nooks and crannies, like cavatelli or campanelle or conchiglie. These will catch some tuna for you with each bite, so you don’t end up with all the tuna swimming in the bottom of your bowl.

This is a special salad worthy of your homemade tonno sott’olio. You blanch the tomatoes and scallions, and briefly sauté the red onion to mellow pungency and soften textures. The salad needs a good hour of marinating to let the sweet and savory flavors mingle. Incidentally, leftovers make great juicy sandwiches. I recommend white balsamic vinegar here, to wilt the red onion and dress the salad. White balsamic is not a traditional product, but it comes from Modena, like any decent balsamic, and it has a clean taste and a light color that don’t muddy dishes the way dark balsamic can. If you can’t find it, use regular wine vinegar. You may also use top-quality canned tuna in this salad, but drain and discard the packing oil and substitute fresh extra-virgin olive oil in the dressing and sauté.

Canned tuna is a staple in my kitchen—in one of the cupboards, there’s always a tall stack of colorful cans of excellent Italian tonno in olio di oliva. Tuna packed in olive oil is the only kind to have, in my opinion, and I make it the basis for many meals, sometimes some pasta for lunch or dinner, or a salad for myself, my mother, and Gianni, or sandwiches for the kids. But when I want the best marinated tuna, I make my own marinated tonno sott’olio: I poach thick tuna steaks gently for 15 minutes, let them cool and dry for a couple of hours, then pack the fish in jars in big chunks, submerged in extra-virgin olive oil. It is truly simple, as this recipe will show you. If you love tuna, then I know you will make this recipe your own. Just a chunk of it on a plate, with nothing more than a drizzle of the marinating oil, makes a great antipasto. Or dress it up with onion or tomatoes, as I suggest for Marinated Mackerel (pages 4 and 5). Use it in the colorful salad I give you here with cherry tomatoes, red onion, and scallions, or see how tonno sott’olio takes your own favorite tuna salad to a new level. And don’t miss the opportunity to make the outstanding pasta sauce with tomatoes on page 14. With this recipe you’ll have about 2 pounds of tuna, in jars or crocks of oil. Stored in the refrigerator, it will keep for a month or more, giving you plenty of time to try it in several different dishes. But I guarantee you’ll want more: to make larger batches, just multiply the ingredients and follow the basic procedures.