Side

This delicious flat bread is great cut into 1- to 2-inch squares and served as an appetizer or cut into larger squares to accompany soups and salads. You can create tasty variations by trying different cheese combinations, such as Cheddar, Swiss, or Monterey Jack, or by changing the herbs to oregano and parsley, or chives and shallots.

If you make this ahead of time, keep it refrigerated but bring it to room temperature before serving.

This is a perfect accompaniment to an autumn meal of roast pork or chicken. You’ll use two oven racks for this recipe. To serve as a vegetarian main course, serve sautéed greens and steamed, herbed wild rice on the side.

This old favorite is a quick snack or accompaniment to a simple soup and salad meal. You can get the bread ready for roasting as the oven preheats. In the summer, I like to serve slices of toasted bread with a topping of chopped or thinly sliced fresh tomatoes from the garden.

This tasty and easy casserole is a wonderful way to enjoy homemade fregola and makes a great accompaniment to braised chicken or veal. If I have not convinced you to make your own, use packaged dried fregola, available at specialty stores or online. Commercial fregola is usually a bit larger than the homemade, so follow the package guidelines for cooking the pasta al dente.

I love cauliflower, but I know not everyone shares my passion for this nutritious but sometimes bland vegetable. This recipe shows that the right cooking method and complementary ingredients can make a cauliflower dish that can steal the show. As is my way with most vegetables, I skillet-cook the cauliflower—slowly sautéing it with little or no added moisture. That way, more of the essential vegetable flavor is retained and intensified, adding layers of caramelization. Here, too, the companion vegetables enhance the cauliflower, with olives lending earthy complexity, and cherry tomatoes giving acidity and freshness. This can be made in advance and reheated. And if you happen to have some left over, it can be the base for a great risotto, or for dressing a plate of pasta for two.

When summer is in full swing and there are mounds of beautiful purple eggplants available, here’s a wonderfully refreshing salad you can make. Since the eggplant is poached rather than fried, it is a light and healthful dish. The flavors and textures of the eggplant, onion, and potato are harmonious, but you can use fewer or no potatoes and more eggplant.

Peppers play a central role in this Calabrian version of potato salad. Fresh green peppers are fried as a main salad ingredient; and peperoncino, dried crushed red-pepper flakes, serves as an essential seasoning. The peppers you want for this are the slender, long ones with sweet, tender flesh, which I have always just called “Italian frying peppers.” These days, with the greater popularity of peppers and chilis here in America, markets sell a number of varieties that are suitable for frying, such as banana peppers, wax peppers, Hungarian peppers, and Cubanelle peppers. In addition to this delicious salad with potatoes, you’ll find many wonderful uses for fresh peppers, fried Italian-style. Season them with olive oil and slices of garlic, let them marinate, and enjoy them as part of an antipasto or layered in a sandwich. Or sprinkle a little wine vinegar on the peppers (with the olive oil and garlic) for a condiment-like salad that is just perfect with grilled fish or chicken.

The trio of seasonal vegetables here lends a distinctive flavor and texture to this skillet-cooked vegetable dish. Crisp and soft at the same time, it is a deluxe version of home fries, with the artichokes and favas adding color and excitement to the familiar flavor of pan-fried potatoes. It’s a great dinner vegetable dish, as well as a terrific accompaniment to eggs at a springtime breakfast or brunch. (If you are watching your carbs, omit the potatoes and increase the amounts of other vegetables by half.)

Potatoes will never taste the same after you have tried this dish. This preparation captures the beauty of the cooking of Basilicata: straightforward, simple, but full of brilliant flavor. Even if you are not so passionate about hot pepper, I encourage you not to be timid with the peperoncino in this dish. Of course, this kind of simple cooking depends on fine ingredients. Excellent olive oil and good potatoes are key. I like russets, but Yukon Gold or waxy varieties would work, too.

This is a fresh and extremely flavorful preparation for strangozzi. The dressing has two components, tender cooked Swiss chard and an uncooked pesto of fresh basil and mint leaves and toasted almonds. (Other leafy greens, such as spinach, chicory, and arugula, could be used, and walnuts could replace the almonds, but the recipe here is true to the region.) It is best to prepare the greens and pesto shortly before you cook and serve the pasta, but if you follow the recipe steps, the dish is actually quite quick-cooking and simple. It is only the multitude of tastes and textures that are complex and tantalizing!

Like pasta itself, tomato sauces for pasta come in endless varieties. This one gets a depth of flavor from vegetable pestata and good bacon. The recipe makes enough sauce to dress two batches of pasta. Use half on fresh strangozzi, and pack up half for a future meal: it will keep in the freezer for 4 to 6 weeks and will be wonderful on any pasta you choose.

Here’s my version of our family’s favorite Umbrian road food: the torta al testo (or crescia) baked and served at Il Panaro, the outdoor eatery and truck stop near Gubbio (see this chapter’s introduction). The unique wood-oven-baked character of the Il Panaro torta is hard to replicate in the home kitchen, yet I’ve found that baking the breads in a cast-iron skillet gives very nice results. The dough is easy to mix and shape, so even if you’re a bread-baking novice you’ll have success with this one.

Ascoli is a city in the Marche region known for its big green olives. They add a distinctive local flavor to this sauce of tomatoes and canned tuna, a pasta dressing found in many regions of Italy. If you can’t find Ascolane olives, other green Italian olives will do. Do not be afraid to alter some of the other ingredients to make your own version of this tasty sauce. For example, anchovies add complexity, but you could omit them if you choose. And though chopped parsley is fine, a little mint and/or a little oregano could go far. Also, do not feel compelled to use the exact pasta shape: I call for ziti here, but fusilli, shells, or mafalde could all add a new dimension to this dish.

Farro, a variety of wheat also known as emmer, was one of the first domesticated crops. It is a low-yielding grain and difficult to cultivate; hence it fell out of favor in much of the world. But in Italy, farro has always been appreciated. The Roman legions ground it to make puls, a version of polenta, and today it is still used to make great soups, or side dishes like this recipe. Served warm or at room temperature, it is wonderful with grilled meats, and a great item on a buffet table. If you want to turn it into a main course, just add shrimp, clams, mussels, or canned tuna. Though farro is the best choice for this recipe, you can substitute spelt, barley, or other grains, adjusting cooking times. And in place of bell peppers, you can flavor the dish with other vegetables such as zucchini or eggplant in the summer, or squash and/or mushrooms in the fall.

Zucchini is such an abundant and tasty vegetable, yet too often is bland and unpleasing when served. This preparation is simple and full of flavor. The anchovies provide much of it, and if you crave the anchovy taste you can increase the amount used. On the other hand, if you are apprehensive about anchovies, cut the amount in half. For extra spice, add crushed red pepper as well. Serve this hot, as an appetizer or a side dish, or prepare it in advance and serve at room temperature. It’s delicious either way (and thus an excellent buffet item). The savory zucchini makes a great pasta sauce, too—simply toss with hot drained ziti (or other short hollow pasta) and top with grated cheese.

Tortelli are filled pasta squares, like ravioli. These are the largest of the pasta shapes in this chapter—you need only eight to ten pieces per serving—and the simplest to make, too, since they need no twisting. Here I give you two savory tortelli fillings that I discovered in Emilia-Romagna. The techniques for making tortelli are the same for this cabbage-and-pancetta filling and for the chard-ricotta filling that follows (page 153). (You can also make tortelli with the fillings I give you for anolini, tortellini, and cappellacci.) As I often say, homemade pasta is so good that you need nothing more than butter (or extravirgin olive oil) and cheese to dress it. So, in the master recipe, I dress the cabbage-filled tortelli with just melted butter (as is customary in the north of Italy)—I would do the same with the chard-filled tortelli. You could also dress them with a light tomato sauce, such as the Romagnola (page 140) or my Marinara Sauce (page 384). And if you are making a meat roast or roast chicken for the same meal, the juices and drippings from the roasting pan would make a splendid dressing for your tortelli.

Celery is plentiful and a wonderful vegetable, yet I see it mostly used in making stocks or salads. This way of braising celery is easy and flavorful, and makes a grand side dish for grilled fish or chicken. It can be cooked in advance and reheated when your guests come—or serve it at room temperature as an appetizer. I’ve also discovered that any leftovers make a very good chutney: chop coarsely and spread on a sandwich of cold cuts or cheese. Fantastic!

This uncooked dressing, enriched with ricotta and butter, is delicious and quite different from the herb-based pestos I’ve found in other regions. You can blend it together in a bowl while the pasta water is heating up and have a distinctive pasta appetizer or main course in minutes. To retain its vibrant, fresh flavors, it is important not to cook the pesto, just toss it with the tagliatelle and serve.