Gluten Free

I am sure all of you have had some version of sausage and peppers, but this one is easy to make, and the sausages remain juicy. The idea is to cook the sausages and vegetables separately, and then combine them at the end. Even though sausage and peppers seem to be quintessentially Italian, peppers are a New World food and were introduced to Italy only after the discovery of the Americas. Italians quickly made them their own and incorporated them on their table. So, when they came to America as immigrants, peppers were abundant and used with excess in many of the Italian American dishes. They are now ubiquitous at every Italian street fair.

In Italy, wild fennel grows literally wild, all over the place, especially in the south of the peninsula. Duringmy travels across America, I also found it abundant as well, wild and cultivated, but the wild fennel grows especially aromatic in California. You can buy wild-fennel seeds to make this recipe, but you can just as well harvest them in the wild by picking the dried flower tops that harbor the fennel seeds in late summer. The anise-licorice flavor brings freshness to any meat when used as a rub.

This rub is great for steaks, roasts, rotisserie chicken, lamb, and even hamburgers. Make sure the meat is patted dry before applying the rub. It is great on the grill or roasted in the oven. When added to hamburgers it adds flavor and also keeps them moist.

This marinade works best when the chicken is cut up in pieces; I also use it to marinate lamb shoulder or lamb leg cut into pieces.

Make sure the meat is patted dry before applying the rub. This rub is great to flavor roasted potatoes as well. Toss 2 or 3 tablespoons of it with cut-up potatoes in a roasting pan, and roast as usual.

This marinade is great with all cuts of pork: loin, butt, ribs, fresh ham, or chops.

In America, commonplace coleslaw is made from green cabbage, but I do see shreds of red cabbage tossed into a mixed salad every now and then. When I was a child in northern Italy, we ate a lot of the cabbage family, from regular cabbage to Savoy cabbage to black kale. We ate red cabbage braised next to a roast, but we also made a lot of differently dressed salads with it. The secret—and the work—was in slicing the cabbage thin. But given today’s food processors and all their different attachments, and the reasonable prices of mandoline slicers, this salad is a cinch to make. You can even slice the cabbage a few hours in advance; just remember to toss it with some vinegar as soon as you slice it to keep its color bright.

The harmony of this salad is that both the radicchio and the endive are from the chicory family, sweet and slightly bitter at the same time.

This is one of the most classic Italian American cookies, and it is one of the easiest to make. In Italian American culture, these are simply known as pinoli cookies, the word “pinoli” referring to the pine nuts that top the cookies, a distinct Sicilian twist. The personal element in making this cookie is to ask yourself if you like it chewy or crumbly crisp—the difference is all in the baking time. With the timing given below, they will be a bit chewy, but of course it depends on how big you make them. Oh, so many variables in cooking!

This quick salad delivers a lot of flavor. The radicchio has a touch of bitterness, but the raisins bring in the sweet element, and the goat cheese the creamy complexity. It is a great appetizer, or can be a main course.

Radicchio belongs to the chicory family. Sweet and bitter at the same time, it is delicious in salads, braised alone, in risotto, and for making pasta sauces. On my recent trip to the Salinas Valley in California, I was astounded to see how radicchio prospered, and how much of it was being produced.

When you think you have nothing to eat or serve, look in your cupboard. Providing that you have shopped for these Italian ingredients (most of them in a can or jar), you can make this delicious and nutritious salad in no time. I like it best at room temperature. It is a great appetizer, but it becomes a meal when topped with some grilled chicken or a can of tuna.

As a child, I had salads in the winter that Nonna Rosa would dress with the flavorful fat rendered from pancetta or prosciutto scraps and a splash of homemade vinegar. The greens were always the tougher winter kinds, like chicory or escarole, and sometimes she even added slices of boiled potatoes, still warm. So, when I had my first spinach salad in America dressed with warm bacon pieces, I assumed my grandma’s salad made with spinach was the American/Italian way.

Lemon ice is simple and delicious and very Italian. This recipe was given to me by Maria at Carm’s in Chicago. It was not too sweet, with a nice tartness, and a bit slushy when she served it to me; I loved it.

Prickly pears—or fichi d’India, as they are called in Italy—grow wild and abundant in Sicily and are eaten simply as a fruit, as a salad, or churned into a dessert, as in this recipe for granita. In the Southwestern United States, the prickly pear grows abundant and wild, and when I visited the Salinas Valley in California, I was delighted to see acres upon acres of this cactus plant growing for commercial harvesting. The Mexican culture uses it in their cuisine, but I was especially happy to see a demand for it here in the States. When you find it nice and ripe in your market, buy it and make this simple and delicious granita with it.

I am sure just about everyone who has traveled to Italy was offered limoncello at some point or other during the trip. This delightful lemon-flavored drink is a custom born in southern Italy, but now limoncello has crossed into not only all of Italy, but also across the Atlantic and into the United States. You can now make limoncello easily at home—no need to travel—and this recipe also works well with oranges. Limoncello is best served cold. Keep a bottle in the freezer for your guests.

I love soups, and I love cauliflower, and who doesn’t like pancetta? This is a delicious soup, and, yes, you can serve it as is, or you can add some cooked white or brown rice. Get yourself some crusty bread, a glass of Chianti Classico or Morellino (the other Tuscan red), and enjoy.

I got this recipe from Guido Pezzini, the patriarch at Pezzini Farms in Castroville, California, who claims that just about every dish his mother cooked included artichokes in some form. This soup is one of his favorites. The Pezzinis are a delightful and caring family, with Sean, the grandson, as the next generation in training.

Escarole is in the chicory family, the bitter dark-green vegetables that Italians love. Escarole played such a big role in the cooking of Italian Americans because it seemed to be one of the few chicory vegetables available here in the States. It is a very versatile and inexpensive vegetable as well: easy to grow, resilient to cooler weather, and giving a large yield per head. The outer leaves can be used in soups, braised with garlic and oil, or stuffed; the tender center white leaves are great for salads. This is an Italian recipe, but the ingredients are adapted to include the local ingredient kale, much loved and eaten in the States.