Make Ahead

Pesto is at its best when used immediately after it is made. However, it can be refrigerated for up to a few weeks if it’s spooned into a container, topped with olive oil, and sealed tight. If you find yourself with an abundance of basil in summer, make some pesto and store it in small portions in the freezer, where it will last for up to a few months. Frozen pesto gives great freshness of taste to hearty winter soups and pasta sauces. Long pasta shapes, like fresh tagliatelle or dried spaghetti or linguine, pair well with pesto. When dressing pasta with pesto, remember these important points: Don’t actually cook the pesto—you’ll lose its fresh quality—but warm it together with the cooked pasta for a minute over low heat. There should be just enough pesto to coat the pasta lightly. If necessary, spoon in a little of the pasta-cooking water to help the pasta and pesto glide into a bowl.

If you have trouble finding ground pork, or if you prefer to grind your own, it’s really very easy. (And if you buy a piece of bone-in pork to grind, you’ll have the bones you need for the sauce.) Remove all bones and gristle from the meat, but leave some of the fat. Cut the pork into 1-inch pieces, and chill them thoroughly. Grind about half at a time in a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Pulse, using quick on/off motions, until the meat is ground coarsely. In my region of Italy, tomato paste is usually added along with the onions to caramelize a little bit. But around Naples, and the rest of southern Italy, tomato paste is stirred right into the sauce. That’s how I do it here. When the sauce is finished simmering, you can pull the meat from the bones and stir it into the sauce, or you can do what I do—nibble on it while the sauce perks away. This makes quite a bit of sauce—enough to feed a small crowd and have enough left over to freeze in small quantities for a quick pasta meal for one or two.

This, like bean- and potato-based soups, can be made ahead, but will thicken a lot. The best bet, if you plan to make the soup in advance, is to reheat it slowly, adding water or stock as needed to restore the soup to its original thickness. And always check the seasoning of reheated soups before you serve them.

Cherry peppers are plump, round peppers that are usually sold pickled in vinegar. They range in color from bright red to dull green, and in spiciness from mild to hot. Good in salads and as part of an antipasto tray, they add a kick to cooked dishes, too, like the Chicken Scarpariello on page 262.These stuffed cherry peppers will look very nice and go a long way to dressing up an antipasto table if you use both red and green peppers. Sometimes you will see these already stuffed hot peppers marinating in oil and vinegar. You can do the same by packing the stuffed peppers into a clean jar and pouring the liquid from the jar of cherry peppers and some olive oil over them. Store them in the refrigerator for up to a few days like that, but be sure to drain them well before you serve them, or they will be messy to eat.

Sometimes I peel eggplants completely, sometimes not at all. Leaving the peel on adds a slightly bitter taste—which I like—but also helps the eggplant hold its shape after you cut it into cubes or slices. If you want the best of both worlds, remove thick stripes of peel from the eggplant, leaving half the peel intact. Caponata can last several days in the refrigerator and is even better after marinating for a day. It is best eaten at room temperature, so remove it from the refrigerator about 2 hours before serving. Caponata is usually served as part of an antipasto assortment, although it makes a wonderful summer contorno, or side dish, to grilled meats or fish.

There is not much to peel in celery, just the strings that run along the ribs that can be annoying to eat. To remove them, I take a peeler and lightly run it along the back of the celery rib. Another way to remove them is with a paring knife. When you are trimming the base or the top of the stalk, don’t just chop away, but gently hold the stalk in your hands and cut from the inside of the stalk to the outside without cutting all the way through. Just before finishing the cut, pull the knife toward you and the strings should peel off down the length of the stalk.

If you like, trim the stems of the mushrooms even with the caps—they will look neater that way. Save the stems for vegetable stock or chop them for a vegetable soup. The mushrooms keep for a few days in the refrigerator. If you want to keep them longer, top them off with enough oil and vinegar to cover them completely. The oil will float to the top and seal out air. They’ll keep a couple of weeks like this.

I love this salad—it’s so fresh and clean-tasting. Sometimes I make a meal of it. Because I really want you to make this salad, I’m calling for store-bought fillets. But if you have a whole striped bass that you’ve filleted, this salad is a great way to use odds and ends from the fish. Poach the fish head and the belly parts you’ve trimmed from the fillets in the court bouillon. Remove the meat from the cheeks and along the top of the head, and trim the bellies of bones and skin. I like the crushed red pepper to be conspicuous in this salad, so don’t be afraid to use it. Start with about 1/2 teaspoon and go from there. And don’t throw the cooking liquid out: save it to make the salad nice and juicy. You could use crabmeat or even chicken instead, I guess, but white fish, like the bass, is perfect prepared this way.

Serve these nice and hot, or let them cool to room temperature. If you’d like to make this a little more contemporary, you can add a dash of balsamic vinegar to the red peppers and scallions as they cook. In true Italian-American style, these are topped with butter, but in Italy, we would use olive oil. Best yet, top them with butter, then “bless” them all with a little olive oil. This wonderful stuffing is delicious in celery stalks baked with a light tomato sauce. You can also line up blanched asparagus on a baking sheet, sprinkle the bread crumbs over them, and bake them until the crumbs are crispy. I’m sure you can come up with a lot of uses for the bread crumbs. Remember, I give you the basics, but I want you to go and play.

If you’re going to take the time to churn your own ice cream, I think it should be chocolate, don’t you? This is sweetened with agave nectar instead of artificial sweetener because the nectar gives the finished stuff real unctuousness and body—almost like the real thing.

Time to go through the impulse purchases you’re storing in the attic or basement and dig out that old-fashioned ice cream maker you thought you couldn’t live without. Here’s a very good reason to unpack it.

Tiramisù is a high-calorie dessert if there ever was one. I started the makeover process thinking the lighter version should include from-scratch sugar-free ladyfingers—homemade génoise piped in perfect finger shapes and baked. Then I got my head screwed on straight and realized that no one would make this dessert if it meant making your own génoise. The fat-laden original was transformed into something even an Italian grandma would love.

“To truly mousse or not to mousse?” That was the question. At first I thought I’d find a great low-fat packaged mousse mix and turn the flavors up by adding some interesting ingredients. I tried it...and decided you deserved better. This is as close as I could get to a real chocolate mousse, made with egg whites and chocolate and very little fat.

There are many ways to flavor tartar sauce. I like cornichons, capers, onions, and Worcestershire sauce (it’s a great flavoring with little caloric significance). There are also many uses for tartar sauce—it’s not just for fried fish. Try it with grilled steak or shrimp, or as a spread on a sandwich.

This sauce is great on chicken wings, of course, but it’s also very tasty on steak, grilled fish, and barbecued shrimp—even on cooked greens like kale and collards. It’s an all-purpose sauce based on Buffalo wing sauce—with a twist. The most important twist may be that it has zero fat and only 33 calories per serving. Traditional Buffalo wing sauce is loaded with butter.

The original Russian dressing was actually made with yogurt. Early in the 20th century, some chef in Chicago replaced the yogurt with mayonnaise—and that’s when it became one of the most popular salad dressings in the country. That little tweak also made it one of the most caloric and unhealthy salad dressings around. In this version, the best of both Russian and Thousand Island dressing, the fat has been reduced from 16 grams to less than 1 gram per serving. It’s perfect for salads, charcuterie—and, of course, the classic Reuben sandwich.

I learned that sweet potatoes are the single healthiest vegetable. They’re loaded with carotenoids, vitamin C, potassium, and fiber. You can dress them up a bunch of different ways, but this simple puree is ideal.