Gluten Free

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.

Guazzetti are sauces made by slowly simmering meat, game, or poultry in stock, creating a velvety texture that coats pasta wonderfully. Traditionally, a guazzetto got its great flavor from bones with little flesh, but it works with meaty cuts too. Country ribs can be so meaty you’ll have more pork than you need for the sauce, so enjoy it in sandwiches or salads or as a ravioli stuffing.

Everyone traveling to Bologna, Emilia Romagna, is bound to eat ragù Bolognese, ricetta tradizionale and/or ricetta antica. Served with fresh tagliatelle, particularly spinach tagliatelle, it is the precursor to meat sauce as we know it, and still the main Sunday staple at a Bolognese Sunday meal. The ricetta antica, an old recipe, has milk added while the sauce simmers, to give it additional richness and velvety texture. Today it is mostly the tradizionale, without milk, that is cooked in Bologna.

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.

Savoy cabbage is the base of this flavorful and hearty wintertime sauce. The cabbage, bacon, and mushrooms are simmered gently for several hours, until the cabbage attains an almost melting texture. The sauce will be thick—and delicious as is with polenta, or loosened in some pasta water to serve with pasta.

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.

Marinara is my quintessential anytime tomato sauce. I can start it when the pasta water goes on the stove and it will be ready when the pasta is just cooked. Yet, in its short cooking time, it develops such fine flavor and pleasing consistency that you may well want to make a double batch—using some right away and freezing the rest for suppers to come. The beauty of this marinara sauce is that it has a freshness, acidity, and simplicity of taste, in contrast to the complexity and mellowness of the long-cooking tomato sauce that follows. This recipe for marinara includes lots of fresh basil, which I keep in the house at all times, now that it is available in local supermarkets year-round. I cook a whole basil stalk (or a handful of big sprigs with many leaves attached) submerged in the tomatoes to get all the herb flavor. Then I remove these and finish the sauce and pasta with fresh shredded leaves, giving it another layer of fresh-basil taste. (If you are freezing some of the sauce, by the way, you can wait until you’re cooking with it to add the fresh-basil garnish.) This sauce can be your base for cooking any fish fillet, chicken breast, pork fillet, or veal scaloppini. Sear any of these in a pan, add some marinara sauce, season with your favorite herbs, and let it perk for a few minutes—you’ll have yourself a good dish.

Capon soup in Italy is the soup of the holidays. Rich and full of flavor, it is a soup base for tortellini, straciatella, and passatelli. Here it is difficult to get capon as readily as it is in Italy, but if you can find one, by all means make a big pot of capon soup following the recipe below. It was my mother who started using turkey, especially the wings, in her basic poultry and vegetable broth. She and Giovanni enjoy the meaty pieces—a couple of wings is plenty for them for dinner. Everyone loves the broth, which is sweet, flavorful, and not too strong. And Lorenzo is always ready to have a bowl of broth with noodles after school—proof of its goodness. Not least important to Grandma is that turkey wings are readily available, inexpensive, and, at our big neighborhood market, often on sale. So turkey wings and turkey broth have become staple items in our freezer. I use the broth as I would chicken or vegetable stock, in sauces, roasts, risotti, and lots of skillet dishes. I’ve found it extremely versatile and tasty—but not so much so that it overwhelms other flavors. Here then is our All-Purpose Turkey Broth—my mother’s original with my adjustments. You can use it in many recipes throughout this book, especially in the long-cooking pasta sauces and main course roasts and braises, as well as for all kinds of satisfying soups. Adjust the broth to suit you: either clear and light or with more body, with the vegetables mashed in. This is a large recipe, giving you plenty to freeze and have on hand whenever you need it.

Corn is a nice addition to minestra—it adds texture and sweetness. It is also a good addition to other vegetable soups, such as fresh fennel, zucchini, or chicory and white bean.

Cook rice just before serving to get the consistency of soup you like: 1/4 cup of rice per quart of base for a lighter minestra, and up to 1/2 cup of rice for a hefty and hearty minestra.

I can still hear the staccato clack-clack-clack of my grandmother’s cleaver on a wooden board as she chopped the pestata, the fine paste of pork fat, garlic, and rosemary, that gave so much flavor to her rich minestra. Occasionally, she would pause and hand me the cleaver: I’d dip it in the boiling soup pot, already full of beans and potatoes, and watch the tiny specks of fat whirl into the broth. After a few moments I’d hand the cleaver back to my nonna, and instantly she’d be chopping again, the hot blade literally melting the thick fat, while the aroma of garlic and pork and beans and rosemary filled the kitchen.... Precious memories! But today I make pestata in the food processor in about 10 seconds! In most ways, however, this minestra is just like my grandmother’s. It cooks for a long time—give it 3 full hours if you can—steadily drawing flavor from pork bones and a soffritto of onion and tomato, and slowly reducing in the soup pot. You’ll have 4 quarts of minestra base, to finish with any of the additions I suggest here, or with other vegetables or grains. Long-grain white rice or small pasta can be added to almost any variation for a denser minestra. For a thicker, smooth consistency, remove some of the beans (a third to a half) before adding the finishing vegetables; purée them, and stir back into the pot for the final cooking.

Try this with poached garlic purée too.

Winter squash and chestnuts are a wonderful combination with this base, adding nutty and sweet flavors and hearty texture. Any firm winter squash is suitable. Use fresh chestnuts or packaged peeled chestnuts (sold frozen or freeze-dried). If using fresh chestnuts, see my peeling method below.

Poached garlic lends its lovely flavor to the soup, and then everything gets a quick whirl in the food processor, producing a light, creamy soup—without cream. Add some crunch to this with Cheesy Crostini (page 60).

This soup is nice without the addition of garlic purée, marvelous with it. If you like, add short shreds of Savoy cabbage in place of some of the cauliflower, or make Savoy-cabbage soup with poached garlic purée instead.