Vegetarian

Literally fichi al galoppo means “galloping figs,” an intriguing name for such a simple dish. As the figs poach slowly in bubbling syrup, it sounds like galloping horses. The trick here is to cook them with enough sugar so the fruit will absorb the syrup, rather than release its own juices. When this balance is reached, the silky figs remain whole and deliciously impregnated with the syrup.

Castagne al vino are a delightful reminder from Maremma that the simple pleasures of rustic life are truly irreplaceable. Roast some chestnuts, and while they are still hot, wrap them in a wine-soaked cloth . . . wait a few minutes . . . then peel and enjoy them with a glass of wine. The question is: red or white wine? The maremmani enjoy, as I do, red wine, a good Morellino. But white wine is also delicious.

Crespelle (Italian for “crêpes”) are easy, delicious, and versatile. You can fill and bake them with almost any stuffing. Here’s a favorite of mine, crespelle filled with a creamy mushroom ragù, as they do it in Maremma. Many wonderful dishes can be made using crespelle in place of pasta. If you have all the ingredients for a filling for lasagna, for example, but do not want to make pasta, crêpes are ideal.

This hearty vegetarian soup gets superb flavor and texture from the long-cooking chickpeas and dried and fresh mushrooms. But the secret to the great taste is the paste (pestata) of aromatic vegetables and herbs, ground in the food processor. Before adding it to the soup however, you give the pestata even more flavor by browning it in a skillet—which makes it, in culinary Italian, a soffritto. As you will see in the coming pages, this pestata/soffritto step is used in many Maremma recipes, in sauces and stews as well as soups. In the country, such a soup is often served with grilled bread, making a whole meal. Adding rice or small pasta to the soup pot during the final 10 minutes of cooking is another way to enhance it. Or drop some good Italian sausages into soup for the last 20 minutes of cooking. Slice them right into the soup, or serve the sausages separately as a second course.

Acquacotta literally means “cooked water,” a traditional term for a soup of just a few ingredients cooked in boiling water. But the pale name in no way reflects the savor and satisfaction of this vegetable soup. It has great depth of flavor, and when served Alma’s way, with a poached egg and country bread in the bowl, it is a complete meal. In country fashion, Alma cracks a raw egg right into each portion of hot soup and inverts another bowl on top, as a cover. You have to wait (mouth watering) for a minute or two before removing the top bowl, to find a beautifully cooked egg. Here I transfer the soup to a skillet and poach the eggs over low heat, to be sure they have cooked thoroughly. Since this soup is so quick, inexpensive, and nourishing, local women would make it often, especially when extra farmhands came to help to harvest the grapes and olives and to work the land.

Cardi are popular all over Italy, but especially in Sicily and in Piemonte, at opposite ends of the country. In Sicily it is cooked as a side dish (contorno) and served with pasta, whereas in Piemonte it is used in soups and stuffings and dipped in bagna cauda. In truffle season, all cardi dishes are served with shavings of white truffles. The prized cardoon of Piemonte—essential if serving with truffle—is the cardo gobbo di Nizza, the tender white cardoon that never sees light. Here is the baked cardoon gratinate I prepare at home with the conventionally grown cardoons available in American markets. The dish is delightful as is, but if you happen to have a white truffle lying around, give it a shave over the gratinate before serving.

When you have a white truffle, enjoy it just as they do in Alba, with golden tajarin. If fresh truffle is unavailable, packaged truffle butter makes a nice dressing for the pasta too (see Sources, page 340). Should you have no truffle at all, tajarin with only butter and Grana Padano or Parmigiano-Reggiano will be simply luxurious, if not quite ethereal.

This is one of the simplest recipes in this book, and it is one of the most sublime. Yes, truffles add a mystique—but even without them this is my favorite way to cook eggs. Essential to this procedure is never to allow the olive oil to reach temperatures at which heat alters and degrades the flavors. Hence, you will ultimately have the full presence of fresh olive oil in a natural state intermingled with the egg and truffle flavors. Thus, the quality of the olive oil is paramount here, more than in most cooked dishes. I like using lighter and more vegetal olive oils from the Lago di Garda district, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, or Istria. Another important point is to keep the curd of the egg large and soft. The steady but gentle dragging of the curds—strapazzati means “dragged”—and controlled heat prevents any part from cooking solid, and in this moist state all the natural flavor of the egg comes through. As with olive oil, the best quality eggs are essential—as fresh as can be, and organic if possible. There is a basic lesson to be learned in this recipe that applies to Italian cooking—for that matter, to all cooking—get the best ingredients, do not overcrowd the flavors, and work the food as little as possible. Along with this lesson, I am sure, you’ll get some of the best scrambled eggs you’ve ever tasted—even without truffles.

I love chutneys, for both their concentrated flavor and the convenience. You make them and store them, and whenever you want that special treat you can just pull them from the fridge or pantry. All you need is a spoonful to enjoy the essence of whatever ingredients you put into them. Cunja is just such a treasured condiment from Piemonte. Quince is a primary ingredient (as it is in cotognata, another traditional Italian chutney), but cunja incorporates the indigenous flavors of late autumn in Piemonte: the local San Martino pears, the mosto of pressed Nebbiolo grapes, and its famed hazelnuts. Though these particular ingredients will probably not be in your market, my recipe produces a thoroughly delicious and long-lasting chutney with much of the layered complexity of cunja. In place of cotto mosto, the cooking liquid here is bottled Concord-grape juice (always made from concentrate); organic juice is highly recommended. Unfortunately, we can’t get small sweet San Martino pears in the United States. These are the last pears to be harvested, in early November, at the same time as the Feast of San Martino—hence their name. Our Seckel pears are an excellent alternative, and Granny Smith apples will also work well. Packed in jars and refrigerated, this will keep for a couple of months. As I explain, cunja is meant to be enjoyed with a creamy Piedmontese cheese, but I serve it with pork roast and other meats. I am sure you will find many delicious uses for it.

Radicchio trevisano will yield the best risotto with the most authentic Italian flavor, but this recipe will be very good with radicchio grown in the United States, either the small round heads, or heads with long wide leaves. Endive, a distant cousin of the radicchio, will also make a good risotto.

Although it is great in a salad—sweet and bitter at the same time—in the cold winter months radicchio trevisano is better cooked, and has a more resilient texture. Traditionally paired with speck—boneless, smoked prosciutto—radicchio makes a great risotto (see page 115) and a great sauce for pasta. In those dishes, the radicchio serves a secondary role as a distinctive flavoring, but when baked this way, it is the main protagonist. I enjoy baked radicchio by the mouthful, savoring its taste and texture, sweet, bitter, and crunchy. The best variety for baking is the long thin radicchio trevisano or spadone (as shown in the photos), but the small round heads most often found in the supermarket or the kind with long but wide leaves (resembling purple romaine lettuce) are also delicious baked this way. Serve as an antipasto or a vegetable course, over soft or baked polenta.

Thick and chewy, with the nuttiness of whole wheat, bigoli is the signature pasta of the Veneto. At Ristorante Celeste in Venegazzu, outside of Treviso, Giuliano Tonon taught me how to extrude fresh dough into strands with a torchio, the traditional hand press. But bigoli is not only a restaurant treat—most home cooks in the region have a torchio in the kitchen and make bigoli every week! Happily, this pleasure is now available to Americans since I have found a genuine torchio for sale on the Internet (see Sources, page 340). Bigoli can also be made with an electric pasta-extruder or a meat grinder. The two traditional sauces on the following pages are packed with flavor. With homemade bigoli, they each make a big, gutsy pasta, very worth the effort and very Venetian. (And if you can’t make your own bigoli, whole wheat spaghetti will be delicious with either sauce.)

Squash is not one of the most popular vegetables, but I love it and love cooking with it. It is nutritious, versatile, and delicious. Northern Italy consumes more zucca—winter squash—than southern Italy, especially in the areas near Modena in Emilia-Romagna, and Padova in the Veneto. This is a great side dish or appetizer. Traditionally, the zucca is fried before it is marinated, as I do here, but the dish is also delicious when made with grilled or boiled zucca. I recommend butternut squash, but acorn, Hubbard, and other varieties will work as well.

Risotto with spinach is delightful, but it is only one of the many risottos made in springtime in Friuli. At the end of winter, the cuisine in Friuli is driven by the wild herbs that people pick or buy from the foragers who come to the markets. These flavorful, healthful greens are cooked in risottos, soups, pasta fillings, and frittatas. This recipe shows the basic technique that is used in Friuli to make risotto with common, delicious plants such as nettles (ortiche), wild asparagus (asparagina), and the popular herb sclopit (Silene vulgaris—maiden’s tears). So, if you happen to come by some of these greens, cook them in place of spinach.

Gnocchi in Friuli are made with the same potato-and-flour dough as the round, ridged gnocchi made elsewhere in Italy, the kind we are most familiar with. But Friuli-style gnocchi have a couple of tempting distinctions. First, you’ll find that their shape is different—they are smooth, slender cylinders that are actually faster and easier to form than round gnocchi. This shape gives you an option in finishing the gnocchi: you can boil, drain, and dress them just as they come out of the cooking pot, or, after they’re boiled and drained, you can gently fry them in butter until golden and crisp on the outside—and then dress them—having gained another layer of flavor and texture. Second—and unique to gnocchi and other pastas in Friuli—is the dressing of melted butter, sugar, cinnamon, and smoked dried ricotta. This melding of sweet, salty, spicy, and smoky may seem exotic at first but will quickly captivate you. Milk products like ricotta are frequently preserved by smoking in Friuli, and smoked ricotta (drier than fresh) is a common household product. It is available here now, but if you can’t find it, use ricotta salata as a good alternative (see Sources, page 340). And if you have a smoker, you can coldsmoke the ricotta salata, for a flavor closer to what is enjoyed in Friuli. You can dress gnocchi friulani with other sauces—basil pesto, tomato—or serve with another regional dish like Beef Goulash, page 58.

These cheese-encrusted rounds of cooked chard, similar to frico, are from Carnia, a district of quaint cities and towns scattered along the Carnic Alps. The milk from the cows grazing on its high-altitude pastures makes some of the best Montasio in all of Friuli. I like to serve these unusual and irresistible cakes as a highlight of lunch or brunch, topped with a poached egg, or in between slices of country bread, as a delectable vegetarian “cheeseburger.” They’re a marvelous accompaniment to grilled meats, or, cut into small wedges, a great party nibble.