Vegetarian

Cipolline are small, flat, sweet Italian onions. This agrodolce preparation of cipolline is one of the staples of my Umbrian tavola, and the most popular contorno at the Osteria, I think in part because onions go with so many main dishes, and they are also easy to share. My dad orders them every time he comes to the restaurant. I think he could make a meal of nothing but these onions followed by a perfectly pulled espresso. In the summer when I can find them, I use long, red torpedo onions in place of cipolline.

Italians famously eat a lot of beans, so including shell beans on our menu was an obvious choice. Shell beans are so delicious and can be prepared in such a variety of ways, and yet you don’t normally see them at conventional grocery stores. Looking for shell beans is a good excuse to visit your local farmers’ market, which is where we find them in Los Angeles in the late summer and early fall. We use a mix of four types of shell beans—borlotti beans, cannellini beans, lima beans, and flageolet—because we like the range of sizes, colors, and flavors of the various beans. Properly cooking beans is about 90 percent of the battle, which is why we cook each type of bean separately; to spare yourself the effort, use fewer varieties of beans. If you don’t have access to shell beans, or when shell beans are not in season, you could make this using dried beans. Refer to Ceci (page 96) for instructions. The recipe for the bouquet is for each pot of beans. You will need to make the same number as types of beans you are making.

Caponata, a traditional Sicilian eggplant preparation, is the perfect example of agrodolce, the Italian word for combining sweet and sour flavors in savory dishes. When people order this antipasto at the Pizzeria, we suggest they also get an order of Fett’Unta (page 65) to absorb the delicious flavors of the caponata. Caponata is an ideal dish to serve at a party, because you can prepare it in advance and serve it at room temperature.

My two favorite salads in the world are a properly prepared Caesar salad and an iceberg wedge with blue cheese dressing, neither of which have any place in an Italian restaurant. Just as I sneaked the Caesar salad in under the guise of a tricolore (see page 98), here I disguised the iceberg wedge sufficiently so that my customers don’t realize that I’m serving a wedge salad, an American classic, in a Pizzeria. I don’t know where I got the idea to throw the dates on the salad, but the contrast of their sweetness with the pungent Gorgonzola really makes this.

Whipping cream is all about the details. Perfectly whipped cream is cloudlike and light, but if you go just a little too far, it becomes too stiff—on its way to turning into butter. I fold in a bit of crème fraîche or sour cream when serving whipped cream on desserts because I love the tang that it adds, and it guarantees a smooth, dense, and shiny cream. If you are whipping cream to put on a pizza, do not add the crème fraîche; simply continue whipping the cream until it is thick and mousselike.

Little Gem lettuce, a smaller, sweeter, very crunchy variety of romaine, appeared recently in Los Angeles the way burrata did: one day nobody had heard of it and now it’s everywhere. Also like burrata, I love it so much that I have found multiple uses for it in my restaurants. The first time I saw Little Gem lettuce was at the Atelier of Joël Robuchon in Paris seven or eight years ago, when I took my daughter Vanessa there for her birthday. A large percentage of Robuchon’s perfectly simple, perfectly executed dishes came with a dressed quarter of this tiny oblong-shaped lettuce with a beautiful, pale green color; I fell in love with Little Gem at first bite.

This mountain of arugula is layered with thinly sliced mushrooms and long thin shards of Piave, a hard cheese similar to but sweeter than Parmigiano—and much less expensive. It’s important to use fresh, firm mushrooms; look for those with closed caps and no blemishes. If you can’t find Piave, Parmigiano is a fine substitute.

Torta della Nonna, or “grandmother’s tart,” is traditionally a two-crusted tart filled with pastry cream that is seen in almost every trattoria in Italy. Dahlia and I knew we wanted to include a version, but luckily, the name gave us a lot of room to be creative. As long as it was reminiscent of something a grandmother would make—meaning homey, simple, and comforting, like this cheesecake version that Dahlia created—I felt we could call it Torta della Nonna. Honey is an obvious pairing with cheese in Italy, so we serve this dessert with three different types of honey on the side: a sweet, delicate, floral honey, such as wildflower honey; a bitter honey (also referred to as savory honey), such as buckwheat or chestnut honey; and honey in the comb. The crust that we use for this torta, Pasta Frolla, is a typical Italian pastry dough used in many classic Italian desserts. In keeping with the Italian spirit, I make it with Italian leavening. You will need an 11-inch flan ring (a straight-sided, bottomless tart ring) for the tart and one that is slightly smaller (we use an 8-inch ring) to cut a circle for the top crust.

These days it’s almost old-fashioned to cook your own beans, even for restaurants. While canned are surprisingly good (I included many canned beans in recipes in my last book, A Twist of the Wrist), homemade beans are so much better. The key to good dried beans is to cook them long enough so that they become creamy. Many restaurants undercook their beans, and frankly I would rather have canned beans than beans that are dry and chalky.

We use this seasoning mix for the Pan-roasted Pork Chops with Olives and Sambuca-braised Fennel (page 241) and the Pork Ribs with Fennel and Apple Cider Vinegar (facing page). It will keep for months, so if you like pork with fennel, make double (or more) of this recipe.

We put so much dried oregano in this vinaigrette that you might think it’s a typo. It’s not. Because the oregano is so prominent, look for sources such as Penzeys that specialize in dried herbs.

I put this on the Mozzarella Bar menu following a visit to Chez Panisse Café, after which I became obsessed with ricotta toast. At the café, they served a garlic crostini with mounds of fresh, fluffy ricotta piled on top, and I just loved it at first sight. I was so excited about that toast that I had to find a way to work it into my repertoire at the Mozzarella Bar. I had been wanting to find a way to work peperonata—stewed peppers—onto the menu, since mozzarella and roasted peppers are a classic combination, but I just hadn’t known how I wanted to serve it. The ricotta toast, or crostoni, offered the perfect solution. While I drifted a bit from tradition, I feel I did that pairing justice. We serve the crostoni with the peperonata on the side, so guests can assemble the combination one bite at a time, with the toast in one hand and a forkful of peperonata in the other. I like being a two-fisted eater, and I just assume other people do too. Because the peperonata makes such a large amount, this is a great antipasto for a crowd. We gave you directions for serving this dish family style, but you could also spoon the peperonata onto individual serving dishes and give one to each guest.

Peperonata is a classic Italian contorno, or side dish, of stewed sweet peppers. This version, which we serve with ricotta-topped crostini at the Osteria and to dress the Buricotta with Peperonata and Oregano (page 152) in the Pizzeria, is unusual and especially delicious because after the peppers are stewed, they are baked—an idea I got from Gino Angelini, a wonderful Italian chef in Los Angeles. Baking the peppers further caramelizes them, making them even richer and sweeter than you ever imagined a vegetable could be.

When the media review the Mozzarella Bar, they almost always mention having eaten this dish. It is composed of two special ingredients—large hazelnuts that we get from Trufflebert Farms in Eugene, Oregon, and sheep’s milk ricotta imported from Italy—paired in an unusual way. Aillade is a French condiment of garlic pounded with some type of nuts, usually served as a condiment for duck or other meats. We make ours with hazelnuts; it’s one of the few condiments that we make at the restaurant using a mortar and pestle because otherwise it comes out too smooth, like peanut butter.

Everyone loves doughnuts, so it didn’t surprise me when these bombolini, Italian for “little doughnuts,” turned out to be the most popular dessert at the Osteria. You’re likely to find some version of sweet fried dough in every Italian region. That said, ours is made with a brioche-style dough that’s fried to order and served with a berry marmellata, or compote, and lemon curd—not at all Italian, but reminiscent of jelly doughnut combinations that Americans know and love. For the marmellata, we use mountain huckleberries from Oregon; you can use blueberries, blackberries, or boysenberries, or a combination—as you like.

One of the principles of Italian cooking—and maybe this is true of all of European kitchens—is not to be wasteful. Italian cooks find a use for every edible component of each animal or vegetable they cook. In the Italian spirit, I use all parts of the celery in this dish. I slice the celery ribs for the salad, and I use the leaves, so often discarded, both in a salad the cheese is served on and to make a celery-leaf pesto that gets spooned onto the cheese. The result is a bright, flavorful, and textural salad that is equally pretty and unexpected. We peel celery using a vegetable peeler anytime we are serving it raw; it takes only a few seconds and the celery is so much more tender with the fibrous strings removed. The pesto recipe makes 3/4 cup, which is more than you will need for this recipe, but it’s difficult to make pesto in a smaller quantity. Spoon the leftovers over grilled chicken, fish, or vegetables; use in place of basil pesto to make a tomato and mozzarella salad; or simply double the salad and the stracciatella in this recipe to make eight salads. Since stracciatella is hard to find, feel free to substitute burrata in this dish. I normally like to use only the pale green leaves from the celery hearts, but since this dish requires so many celery leaves, I call for you to use the darker green leaves for the pesto, reserving the light green leaves for the salad. If you were inclined to buy even more celery, then use the light green leaves for both parts of this recipe—and use the excess celery ribs as inspiration to make Basic Chicken Stock (page 27), Soffritto (page 28), Lentils Castellucciano (page 264), or any of our other recipes that begin with sautéed diced celery.

Pain de mie is a French-style bread shaped like a traditional, square-edged slicing loaf similar to a Pullman loaf. Mie means “crumb” and is a breadbaker’s term that refers to the inside of bread—that which isn’t the crust. This bread is so named because, baked in a loaf pan, it doesn’t have a crust. Pain de mie contains a touch of sugar and butter so it makes for the most flavorful bread crumbs. If you can’t get pain de mie, substitute brioche, which is even more buttery.

I’ve been making a version of this condiment for as long as I can remember. Currants and pine nuts are a traditional Sicilian combination, so anytime I use this I feel like I am making a Sicilian dish.

Marshmallow sauce is one of those things that can’t be made in a small batch. It must be served the day it is made, so making it is a great excuse to feed the Caramel Coppetta with Marshmallow Sauce and Salted Spanish Peanuts (facing page) to a crowd.

This is a simple and foolproof recipe for the creamiest, lemoniest curd you’ll ever taste. It makes more than you will need for the Bombolini with Berry Marmellata, Lemon Curd, and Vanilla Gelato (page 293), but you can use the leftovers in countless ways: serve it atop Greek Yogurt Gelato (page 313) or as a dessert sauce for Cannoli di Gelato (page 287), or do the English thing and spoon it onto warm scones.