Vegetarian

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).

At my grandma’s house, we used to have this kind of salad many a time, with a slice of homemade bread and some good cheese, for supper.

Raw spinach salad can be delicious, but, in my opinion, a brief cooking—really just a dip in boiling water—brings out the vegetable’s best qualities. Use really young, tender spinach for this salad. It’s easy to find baby spinach in plastic packs these days, but whenever you can—especially in springtime—buy clusters of tender leaves with tiny reddish stems joined at the roots, as they were plucked from the earth. Trim only the hairy tip of the roots, and cook the leaves and stems still together. Make sure you wash them several times, since dirt lodges between the stems.

Carrots are an unappreciated standby. We tend to use them for everything but rarely highlight them. This dish brings out their sparkle.

This beautiful salad really depends on good ingredients: small firm beets with fresh unblemished greens still attached; a crisp tart apple or perhaps ripe fresh peaches or Black Mission figs; and aged goat cheese with a crumbly consistency. Roasting the beets to intensify the sweetness is also a key to the best salad.

Celery is often underappreciated as a principal salad ingredient. The inner stalks of the head have a wonderful freshness, flavor, and delicacy when thinly sliced. Here I’ve paired them with fresh baby artichoke slices in a salad with lots of bright, subtle flavors and all kinds of crunch. Shards of hard cheese—either Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano—lend even more complexity to the mix. Use only firm and very small artichokes for this: they should feel tight and almost squeak when you squeeze them, and they should have no choke.

Serve this colorful and delicious salad as a first course by itself, with other antipasti, or with grilled foods. You can use this low-fat method of preparing eggplant in other dishes too. I top it with shavings of ricotta salata (ricotta that has been salted and dried in a small round cheese form for about 4 weeks).

You may have heard me describe the extraordinary qualities of an authentic aceto balsamico tradizionale—how it takes 20 years of careful concentration to develop its intense flavors; how a few drops make a dish taste magical; and how the price of a tiny bottle has caused many unsuspecting tourists to faint! Here, though, is a more reasonable way to bring some of the intensity and complexity of the greatest balsamic vinegar to everyday dishes: reduce a bottle of the affordable commerciale grade of balsamic to a thick syrup. Don’t look for the cheapest “balsamic” on supermarket shelves; look for a vinegar from a reputable company, produced in Italy—and expect to pay $8 to $10 for a pint. I use this condiment on a range of dishes (and in numerous recipes throughout the book), as a thick sauce to drizzle on meats and vegetables and, in a somewhat thinner state, as a glaze on roasts. As you’ll see in the recipe, the vinegar reduces with added honey and bay leaf, but you can give it other flavor notes. I vary these with the dish I intend to dress: for vegetables I add whole cloves; for meat and poultry I add rosemary; for fish I add thyme. The basic formula will provide you with syrup for drizzling on a half-dozen dishes, maybe more. It will keep forever in the refrigerator, but I’m sure you’ll use it up quicker than that!

This might be considered a salad, but it is a wonderful stuzzichino (something to nibble on). Slow roasting intensifies the flavor of olives and gives them an unusual yet delightful crunch. Tossed with vinegar-poached pearl onions, they make a lively and beautiful salad-condiment. Serve this as an antipasto with cured meats and cheeses, or with grilled meats and fish. It is also a great garnish for sandwiches or with slices of grilled bread. All you need is a plate, a fork, and a glass of good red wine.

This is a great spring salad with two long, lovely green vegetables that have a real affinity for each other (try the Asparagus, Green Pea, and Scallion Sauce for pasta in chapter 3). It is delicious as an antipasto or a first course, or as a side dish to grilled meat and fish. You can serve this salad chilled, but I like it at room temperature. If you haven’t poached scallions before, be sure to note how nicely it brings out the flavors in a mellow way. And here’s a thrifty cooking tip: scallion trimmings are some of the most useful scraps in the kitchen. A handful of leaves and the root ends can make an instant broth, as a substitute for stock—see my recipe for Simple Vegetable Broth, page 288.

As with pizza or focaccia, the bread base of the gratinate can be covered with all manner of savories. A big batch of sliced mushrooms sautéed with lots of garlic and herbs makes a great topping. Use wild mushrooms if you have some or a mixture of wild and cultivated (see box on page 139 for suggestions). Use a whole-grain country bread as a base for a more gutsy flavor.

The inspiration for this recipe came on a recent visit to France. In a small bistro, I was served an elegant but amazingly simple gratin, just a thin layer of sautéed onions with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano on top, baked in a hot oven to form a crisp, fragile delicacy. When I got home, I decided to replicate it—but with a base of thin bread slices underneath the onions, to make it easier to assemble and serve. To my great delight, the bread became wonderfully crisp in the oven, adding more texture, and at the same time captured the delicious onion juices. The key to wonderful flavor here is slowly cooking the onions in a big skillet—they should be meltingly soft without any browning, and moist without excess liquid. Sweet onions are the best—large Vidalia, Maui, Walla Walla, or any other of the fine varieties now available. A gratinate—the Italian term for a baking dish encrusted with cheese or other crisp topping—fills a big sheet pan. It will serve a large group as an appetizer or a lunch dish, or make a great hors d’oeuvre for a crowd, cut in small pieces. You can bake it ahead for convenience, and serve it at room temperature or briefly warmed in the oven.

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.

Cipollotto di Acquaviva, small sweet onions baked with a sprinkle of bread crumbs, is another one of those simple gems from the Antichi Sapori restaurant. Acquaviva is a nearby town famed for the sweetness of its onions. Chef Pietro Zito prepared them for me this way, and they were as sweet as apples. To make these at home, buy any of the sweet onions in the market—such as Vidalia, Walla Walla, or Maui—preferably small, flattish ones, about 2 ounces each. Serve three or four baked onion halves as an appetizer. You can also season and roast the onions on a slow grill, covered—they make a great accompaniment to grilled fish and meat. And very small onions baked Acquaviva style are a wonderful bite-sized hors d’oeuvre.

It is hard to reproduce an authentic version of a typical Pugliese bread without the special starter and the wood-burning oven for baking. But, as you will find with the following recipe, this memorable focaccia is one that you can bake successfully at home. The topping of marinated onions and cherry tomatoes is simple and delicious. With this dough as a base, however, you can be creative and make a focaccia with mushrooms, leeks, sausages, and cheese in any combination. Keep in mind, though, that a simple topping, with a few distinct and harmonious flavors, is always more successful than a topping that tries to incorporate too many things. Be sure to season your topping ingredients and, where appropriate, cook and cool them before assembling the focaccia, so they don’t just dry out in the oven.

This is one of those elemental yet marvelous pastas made from almost nothing but a cook’s inventiveness. If you lived in Puglia and all you had in the pantry was oil, garlic, a handful of pasta, a hunk of bread, and a sheaf of dried oregano, this is what you would make for your family. And they would be happy. Don’t wait for an empty refrigerator to make this. Just have some good country bread—a couple of days old is best—and some bucatini. The contrasting textures of those thick, hollow strands, perfect for slurping, and the hand-torn crumbs of bread, crisp and crackling, is just great. (And if you happen to have some Canestrato Pugliese, grate some on top. It will take you straight to Puglia.)