Simmer

Roasting brings out a deep concentrated flavor in foods. This soup tastes incredibly rich, but is low in fat and calories. However, I sometimes garnish the soup with a dollop of unsweetened whipped cream.

There are two kinds of pumpkins—those intended for carving jack-o’-lanterns, and those that are usually smaller and rounder, with thick, fleshy skins, which are intended for pumpkin pies. Either kind of pumpkin is suitable for soup, though you may need to drain the jack-o’-lantern’s cooked flesh to concentrate the pulp. In the convection oven, you can roast the pumpkin to make pumpkin puree. See the Note below.

Cooking the onions for this hearty soup requires less tending in the convection oven than in a saucepan and the aroma is just as wonderful!

This updated classic soup of Mexico is easier to make when you let the convection oven do the cooking. Add a squeeze of fresh lime juice to each bowl when you serve it.

If you make this ahead of time, keep it refrigerated but bring it to room temperature before serving.

The difference between marinara sauce and tomato sauce is this: Marinara is a quick sauce, seasoned only with garlic, pepper, and, if you like, basil or oregano. The pieces of tomato are left chunky, and the texture of the finished sauce is fairly loose. Tomato sauce, on the other hand, is a more complex affair, starting with puréed tomatoes and seasoned with onion, carrot, celery, and bay leaf, and left to simmer until thickened and rich in flavor. Make this sauce with fresh tomatoes only when the juiciest, most flavorful ripe tomatoes are available. (Increase the amount of olive oil a little if you make the sauce with fresh tomatoes.) Otherwise, canned plum tomatoes make a delicious marinara sauce.

Semolina cooked in cream becomes a thick, delicious porridge, with an almost puddinglike consistency, that can be enjoyed many ways. In Sardinia I have had it as an appetizer with honey drizzled on top, and as a dessert with a sauce of mirto, or myrtle. I loved both! And I’ve made it as a warm breakfast treat, too. Here I give you mazzafrissa as a dessert, with a lovely blueberry sauce (strawberries or cherries or other seasonal berries would be good, too). Scoop the warm cereal into serving bowls and top with the blueberry sauce, or serve the sauce on the side and let your guests help themselves.

In the introduction to this chapter, I tell about the extraordinary red onion from Tropea. Its healing qualities have been promoted since Roman times. And though not widely publicized, the wine-red onion is particularly valued by the men of the coast for its capacity to enhance a certain romantic vigor—a legend now confirmed by recent scientific research, we were told, that found la cipolla rossa di Tropea naturally rich with the same compound as delivered by the drug Viagra! I can’t comment on that, but I can tell you with certainty that one can only love any dish featuring the Tropea onion, whether raw or cooked. This wonderful soup, with lots of onions and good San Marzano tomatoes, is the one that we sampled in Calabria and that I have since re-created at home. Made with American-grown sweet onions, it is almost as good as the original version. It can be a meal in itself, or a very special opening course.

In the coastal areas of Basilicata, the varied catch of the day is the basis of this uncomplicated yet very tasty fish soup. Here I recommend using monkfish and grouper fillets, both with firm texture, so they won’t fall apart in the zuppa. Halibut is another good choice. Indeed, many varieties of fish and shellfish can be prepared this way, as long as you adjust the cooking time so the flesh remains intact and avoid overcooking. If using clams or mussels, use a wider pot, so the shells do not break the meaty fish as they open. For a more substantial dish, place a slice of grilled or toasted country bread, or a few slices of spicy potato, Patate Lessate con Diavolicchio (page 302), in each soup bowl before ladling in the zuppa di pesce.

Lentils and pasta are a traditional pairing in Italian cooking, and most of the regions in the southern part of the boot enjoy pasta con lenticchie in some form, usually in soups. In this dish, which I was served in Basilicata, the lentils were cooked with other vegetables into a sauce that served as a delicious dressing for rigatoni. It was excellent that way. This sauce seems to me even more delightful as a dressing for whole-wheat or barley pasta.

In the dialect of the Lucani (as natives of Basilicata are known) maritare means “to wed,” and I have always thought that this wonderful soup was so named because it was customarily served at wedding celebrations. Recently, however, while doing some research, I came upon another explanation of why it is called maritata—because it weds vegetables (in the soup base) with meat (in the polpette), and with this added protein it becomes a complete and balanced one-course meal. I like both interpretations of the name and believe they’re compatible. Certainly a young couple, on the brink of their first night as newlyweds, can use this fortifying nourishment! There are many ways to prepare and serve a soup with multiple elements like this one, and you can of course play around with the recipe here. One variation is to fry the meatballs rather than poaching them. Though it takes a bit more work, it does give another layer of flavor (see my recipe for Meatballs in Broth in the Umbria chapter, page 196, for instructions on frying little meatballs for soup). Another option is to add cubes of provola to the soup just before serving. If you can get a good-quality Italian provola (mild provolone), this embellishment is superb. I’ve included instructions for this step at the end of the main recipe.

The Italian title calls for John Dory as the fish, and by all means use it if you can find it, but otherwise sea bass will be just as delicious.

In this dish, the cavatelli are dressed with a sauce of fresh fava beans, always a great treat in season. Another special ingredient here is ricotta salata, or salted ricotta, a marvelous product made from fresh sheep’s-milk ricotta that is pressed, dried, and aged for a few months, until fairly firm, retaining the mild, milky taste of fresh ricotta yet with more complexity. It is a traditional accompaniment to fresh favas—a delicious pairing you will taste here—but ricotta salata is a great final seasoning on many other pastas as well. As I instruct in this recipe, ricotta salata is best grated on top of the pasta just before you serve it. Put a chunk of it on the table with the grater, and let people shower on more ricotta salata as they dig deeper into their bowls.

I love all kinds of Italian fish soups, having sampled countless versions of zuppa di pesce, served with just enough tomatoey sauce to slurp up with a spoon, as well as brodo di pesce, a flavorful fish stock usually with nothing but rice. A new discovery for me, though, was this Molisano version of brodo di pesce, with chard and peppers floating between chunks of seafood in a savory broth. Served with grilled bread or a slab of grilled polenta, it is indeed a complete meal. Relish it with a glass of crispy white wine from the region’s distinctive Falanghina grape varietal, and you can taste Molise beckoning you.

This special dessert is so good—and so much fun to prepare and serve—I hope you’ll be persuaded to make and keep scrippelle (crêpes) on hand all the time, as they do in the kitchens of Abruzzo. Here, you slice the scrippelle into strips (they look like fresh fettuccine!) and toss them in a hot caramel, apricot, and citrus sauce that you’ve got bubbling in a skillet. Serve the beautifully glazed ribbons still warm, with whipped cream melting on top. This recipe calls for a full batch of the thin pancakes (the same ones used for the savory Crespelle with Spinach, page 234), but it is easy to adjust the amounts to make a larger or smaller dessert. Even if you have only a couple of extra scrippelle in your freezer, you can still transform them, with this basic technique, into a treat for two. Let your creativity loose: Just like pasta, scrippelle ribbons can be dressed for dessert in countless ways. Add rum or liqueur to this caramel sauce, or vary it with other fruit preserves or juices. Shape the ribbons into a little nest for a scoop of ice cream. Or drizzle melted chocolate over the warm ribbons, sprinkle with chopped toasted hazelnuts, and top with a dollop of whipped cream.

I love ground-meat sauces that cook slowly for hours, allowing an exchange of flavors between the meat, cooking liquids, and seasonings and concentrating them into a dense, delicious dressing. Emilia-Romagna is famous for such sauces, the classic Ragù alla Bolognese (page 382) and Ragù di Carni Bianche (page 137) among them. This Abruzzese sauce is quite similar in its procedures, though it uses only pork rather than a mixture of ground meats. It also has some of the typical flavoring touches of the region, notably a generous dash of peperoncino and a greater volume of tomatoes, rendering it a bit more acidic and definitely more lively than a conventional, mellow Bolognese. It’s a great dressing for homemade maccheroni alla chitarra, and wonderful with other pastas, too. At home, whenever I’m preparing a dish like this that takes a long time—and yields such delicious results—I make more of it than I need for one occasion. Another great, effortless meal is a good reward for the hours and effort devoted to cooking the sauce. That’s why I have formulated this recipe to yield enough ragù to dress a pound of maccheroni or other pasta on the day it is cooked, with an equal amount to pack away in the freezer.