Vegetarian

I love buckwheat for the earthy, gritty character it brings to many dishes. Flour made from the buckwheat seed (it’s not a relative of wheat) is used in Japanese soba noodles and is traditional in Italian pasta too. In the Valtellina they make a dish called pizzoccheri, buckwheat pappardelle dressed with cabbage and bacon and Fontina.

Some of the first pastas in Italy, made by the Etruscans and later the Romans, were made out of barley and chickpea flour. When wheat came on the scene, it was milled as whole wheat and used for pasta. We find 100-percent whole wheat a bit dense and hard to digest these days, so I use equal proportions of white and whole wheat here to make a light, fast-cooking pasta with a distinctive taste.

This versatile soup base is not really a broth, in the way my turkey broth is—that is, a clear liquid strained of all the ingredients that gave it flavor. In truth, the base starts cooking with several pounds of potatoes, carrots, and celery, and they stay in there. Yet, remarkably, it ends up light, clear, and clean-tasting, like a broth. To enjoy the clarity and consistency of the base, often I’ll add nothing more than rice, for texture and flavor. Onion and poached garlic make a flavorful yet light cream soup. On the other hand, I might fill the base with lots of textured ingredients, like mushrooms and barley, or lentils and ditalini pasta. And vegetables that break down during cooking and melt away, such as parsnip or winter squash and chestnut, utterly transform the texture.

Corn, polenta, came to Italy from the New World, and yet, along with pasta and rice, it is one of the beloved starch dishes of Italy. Polenta was for the northeastern regions of Italy what potatoes were for Ireland. Corn grew in abundance there and fed many people and still does, so much so that the people of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region are known as polentoni, polenta eaters. I come from the region, and I grew up eating polenta and still do eat it often. As a child I had just cooked or leftover polenta for breakfast with milk and sugar or with caffe latte, or pan-fried with some sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on top, as well as in endless ways accompanying vegetables, meats, fish, and cheeses. It is rather simple to cook—all you need is cornmeal, water, salt, olive oil, and a few bay leaves. When done, you can enjoy the polenta piping hot or let it cool and take shape, then cut and fry it, or grill and bake it, topped with anything you choose. In this chapter you’ll find it with leeks, with bacon lardoons, with Montasio cheese, or with just an egg yolk nestled in a piping-hot mound of polenta. Beyond the flavor of polenta, I look for the mouth feel, and that depends on the grind. Instant polenta will give you a smooth puddinglike texture, the medium grind a bit more texture, and the coarse will have almost a raspy feel in your mouth. There is also white polenta, milled from white corn, which is used much in the Veneto. And the polenta taragna, which has buckwheat milled along with the yellow corn, has much texture and flavor. The one important caution in cooking polenta is to get it smooth. Start it in cold water and whisk well while it cooks; it may take a bit longer but ensures lump-free polenta. Even though polenta might look done, make sure you cook it the recommended time; its digestibility and flavor increase with longer cooking time.

Gnudi means “naked dumpling,” because it’s truly a stuffing without a pasta shell. So if you love those stuffings in ravioli, skip the pasta—this dish is for you.

Manicotti are delicious and provide an easy way to enjoy the textures of stuffed fresh pasta baked in sauce.

You can make this colorful and fresh-tasting dish anytime with a batch of Twenty-Minute Marinara Sauce and cherry or grape tomatoes, which are in the market almost year-round and often are sweeter than large tomatoes. This is one baked dish in which I use fresh mozzarella in the filling. I love its texture and fresh taste in uncooked or quick cooked pastas, and these can be lost in long cooking. Buy small whole mozzarella balls, an inch in diameter, if you can. Sometimes they are called bocconcini, little mouthfuls, but in my neighborhood the supermarket calls them ciliegine, little cherries. Toss them whole with the hot pasta so they keep their integrity in the baking dish—you don’t want them to melt away like shredded mozzarella on top.

This delicate and quite simple ravioli is a lovely way to enjoy the affinity of pear and cheese. The filling is a lively blend of shredded ripe pear, shredded 3- to-6-months-aged Pecorino Romano (it should be semisoft), and mascarpone—just stirred together at the last moment.

This is a fine fast sauce for Shrimp and Tomato Ravioli and Simple Ricotta Ravioli (preceding recipes) as well as for Potato, Leek, and Bacon Ravioli (page 186). Make the sauce just before the ravioli come out of the pot, for the freshest taste. You should definitely peel the tomatoes for this: see my method on page 261.

This is a simple, pure version of cheese ravioli, without the eggs that are usually added to firm up the filling. Use fresh whole-milk ricotta with large curds and drain it thoroughly to get the best consistency. With creamy fillings such as this one, I feel that a slightly thicker dough provides more texture and is preferable to a very thin dough. If you roll your dough strips to get eighteen or twenty ravioli—following the guidelines below—that’s better than trying to stretch them to get twenty-four. All you need is enough sauce to coat the ravioli lightly. So those small portions of sauces you have saved in the freezer might be just enough to dress a batch.

Spinach pasta is essential to Pasticciata Bolognese (page 200), but you can enjoy it in all the cuts and shapes of fresh pasta. It is best to start prepping the spinach well ahead of time, as detailed in the recipe, for the best texture. You can always freeze the dough until you need it. Spinach pasta is usually more moist than other fresh pastas and so will cook more quickly.

These three pasta doughs look almost identical on paper all purpose flour, eggs, olive oil, water. So you may wonder: How do I know which one to make? Which is the best? The truth is, I’d love to have you make all three so you can see and feel and taste the big differences that result from small variations. And you will realize there is no single “best.” As Italian cooks know, you can mix flour into a fine pasta dough with whatever eggoil water mixture you like, whatever is available in the pantry, or whatever you can afford. This last factor in particular reflects the way pasta has fit into Italian life for centuries: The rich man can have his cook make pasta moistened entirely with fat-laden, tasty egg yolks. A poor family might make their Sunday pasta with one precious egg (and have weekday pasta mixed only with water and a bit of oil). And families in between make pasta with the ingredients they have. But don’t be fooled. The richest is not necessarily best. With two eggs and a goodly amount of extra-virgin olive oil, Poor Man’s Pasta is quite rich and delicious (frankly, it’s my favorite). Part of the fun is in mixing and matching the right pasta with the most compatible sauce, and you’ll find guidance in the pages ahead as well as the challenge to try your own pairings.

This is a great vegetarian sauce, very complex and satisfying. It’s excellent for pasta, baked in a lasagna or polenta pasticciata, cooked into risotto or as a condiment for grilled steak or fish. The mushrooms you can buy at the supermarket will make a fine sauce; if you have fresh wild mushrooms it will be even better. In either case, dried porcini provide a key element in this sauce (and many others). On using dried porcini, see box on facing page.

Your family will love this fresh flavored purée and won’t guess that it was made from what some consider scraps-the stubs from asparagus stalks and the thick green tops of leeks. And if you hate to throw away tasty, usable food, as I do, you will feel virtuous. The stubs of fresh, tender, skinny asparagus are best for this-don’t even bother if the stubs are dry, white, and woody. Likewise, use only fresh, flexible leek greens here-it’s OK if the leaves are firm and thick but not if they’re wilted, old, or hard as leather.

Here’s a fitting sauce for springtime, full of seasonal treasures: asparagus, sweet peas, scallions, leeks, and fresh mint. And the color? Springtime green! Of course, since all of the ingredients are available year round, you can enjoy this anytime. But it is truly splendid when made with produce in season. Fresh asparagus-locally grown if you can get it-is the foundation of this sauce, both its sweet flavor and the pleasing texture of the finely sliced vegetable. Use skinny asparagus spears for uniform appearance and easy slicing (and don’t throw away the stubs; see recipe that follows). If available, fresh sweet peas are wonderful in the sauce. If not, frozen peas are always acceptable.

I don’t call this sauce “simple” because it is dull in any way. It is a wonderful sauce, lightly textured but richly flavored, sweet and tangy like good tomatoes, and so versatile that I consider it a kitchen staple, one of the sauces that I always have in the freezer. All you need are canned tomatoes; a small amount of onion, carrot, and celery; and salt, peperoncino flakes, and two bay leaves. Then the sauce should mellow for a few hours if possible before using.

You don’t have to wait for primavera—springtime—to make this quick skillet sauce. You probably have most of the ingredients in your pantry and refrigerator all year: canned tomatoes, onions, garlic, a few perennially fresh vegetables like broccoli, mushrooms, and zucchini, and sweet peas from the freezer. (The recipe lists the vegetables I prefer, but don’t be afraid to use others, if that’s what you have on hand.) A key step here is parboiling the firm green vegetables and shocking them in ice water. Then they will only need to heat briefly in the tomato sauce and will keep their own colors, flavors, and textures. This recipe yields about 5 cups or more of sauce, depending on the vegetables. If that looks like more than you need for the amount of pasta you are cooking, take the extra sauce out of the skillet before you toss in the pasta. (See box, page 97.) Refrigerate the reserved sauce and use within 2 or 3 days, or freeze it for a few weeks (it will still taste good, although the color of the vegetables changes a bit in reheating it).