Italian

A crisp salad dressed with oil, vinegar, and herbs is a light alternative to a side of pasta. The chicken makes wonderful leftovers. Reheat it for 10 minutes, and try it in a sandwich with a little extra sauce on the side.

From the Friuli region of Italy, the Parmesan wafers known as frico add a crisp and salty counterpoint to the salad.

We use vegetable bouillon cubes to add to the flavor in a lot of our recipes, and they really make all the difference here, adding body and depth to this risotto. Don’t get too concerned about size when you are cutting up the butternut squash. If you have different-sized pieces the smaller ones will soften as they cook and mix in, enhancing the creaminess, and the larger pieces will retain their shape, giving the risotto more texture.

What is focaccia really? Is it pizza? Is it bread? Well, it’s a little bit of both. This version of focaccia is definitely a crowd-pleaser. Just stand back and watch people’s eyes light up as they get the zip from the crushed red pepper. That, along with the subtle taste of the roasted garlic, makes this a perfect food to share—just make sure whoever you talk to eats some of it, too.

I love everything about stuffed shells—love to make them, love the aroma as they’re baking, and even love waiting for the cheese on top to get brown. And, of course, I love to eat them. Here’s the good news: other than the fact that it takes a while to stuff the shells, they’re super easy to make. Plus, you can freeze any leftovers for later.

In our family, this dish is usually made with chicken. Then Megan started trying to convince us that tofu was actually good. I tried it reluctantly, and I was kind of surprised to find that the tofu wasn’t bad (shocking, I know). So even though I’m not a true tofu believer, this is pretty good, especially if you use baked tofu, which holds together when you cut it up much better than regular tofu does.

Here’s a great party dish that feeds a horde and can be made a day ahead and baked at the last minute. It can handle an endless amount of fiddling—from adding more vegetables (I’ve tucked in layers of sautéed sliced yellow and green zucchini, eggplant, red and green peppers, and mushrooms, to name a few) to tweaks like eliminating all cheese (including in the pesto) for a vegan version created for my lactose-intolerant daughter (see Variation). Buy prepared pesto if you want less prep work.

Every summer I have out-of-control basil growing in my garden, and it’s a serious challenge to come up with ways to use it all. It sometimes seems to grow faster than I can pick it. Then there is my garden arugula and several bountiful bushes of candy-sweet cherry tomatoes of varying colors. This salad guarantees that no cherry tomato or basil leaf goes to waste. For parties, I take a huge platter-size version of the salad, drizzle the pesto vinaigrette over the fresh mozzarella, and leave a small pitcher of the vinaigrette on the side for those who can never get enough of the deliciously pungent stuff.

My friend Domenica Marchetti knows her pasta. She’s the author of several fantastic books on Italian cooking, but the latest, The Glorious Pastas of Italy, is probably the closest to her heart, so I had to ask her what kind of dish this mother and wife might make for herself on a night she’s alone. She picked something that she grew up with, that her family made just once a year as part of the traditional Italian “feast of the seven fishes” on Christmas Eve. It dawned on her that she didn’t need to wait for the holidays to make it, and now, neither do I. It’s right up my alley. In fact, the day she sent me the recipe, I looked in my fridge and pantry to confirm I had every single ingredient on hand. I couldn’t help but smile; dinner was sealed, deliciously.

The thought of this dish came to me when I saw new varieties of individually sized cantaloupes, about the size of grapefruits, at my local farmers’ markets. As a single cook, I’m drawn to anything with that single-serving thing going for it. But if you can’t find any of these little ones, use 1 cup of the flesh from a larger cantaloupe and save the rest for breakfast or a snack the next day. Now, I can imagine what you’re thinking: pasta with cantaloupe? Seriously? I first read about it in Giuliano Hazan’s Thirty-Minute Pasta and knew I had to downscale it—and add prosciutto, such a natural thing to pair with cantaloupe.

True Bolognese sauce takes hours to simmer and deepen. Since the Yucatan-Style Slow-Roasted Pork (page 66) is already deeply flavored from all those hours in the oven, all you need to do is take it on a brief trip to Italy. This makes a very hearty all-inclusive serving for one; you could easily stretch it to serve two by boiling up a little extra pasta and including a salad and some bread on the table.

Like so many other American cooks, I learned to make risotto from Marcella Hazan—not directly, of course, although wouldn’t that be great? This is a quintessentially summertime recipe; make it when fresh corn, tomatoes, and basil are all converging on your local farmers’ market or farmstand. Risotto is one of those dishes that makes great leftovers—especially to form into balls, stuff with cheese, roll in bread crumbs, and fry to make arancini. So if you like the thought of that in your future, feel free to double or triple this recipe. Eat this with a vibrant green salad and some chewy bread for a filling supper.

When I asked friends for their favorite pizza-combination ideas, this one, from former Boston Globe Living Arts editor Fiona Lewis, jumped to the front of the line. First, I’m a freak for figs: fresh when they’re in season, of course, but dried at other times of the year. Second, when Fiona mentioned it, I had just started yielding to an addiction to Taleggio, the pungent, slightly bitter Italian cheese that tastes of mushrooms. I immediately thought walnuts would be a perfect crunchy addition to this party, and I invited along my old friend radicchio to add even more bitterness. Once I got the layering order right (walnuts need to go on the bottom, under the nest of radicchio, to avoid burning under the broiler), this was a keeper. Obviously, if you want to make this when fresh figs are in season, by all means do so; skip the soaking-in-wine step and you’ll be good to go.

I came up with this pizza idea when sampling the beautifully made charcuterie of Nathan Anda, who sells at farmers’ markets in the Washington, D.C., area. When he pulled out a package of fatty German-style speck and suggested that it would melt on top of pizza, I had to try it with a bagful of mushrooms I bought from a nearby vendor. He was right: The fat from the speck basted the mushrooms in richness. If you can’t find German-style speck, substitute Italian lardo raw, thinly sliced bacon.

The only liberties I’ve taken with the classic margherita is to let one of my favorite pizza cheeses, smoked mozzarella, provide that extra, haunting flavor, to echo the smoke from a wood-burning pizza oven. And, of course, there are the 12-Hour Tomatoes (page 2) that I hope you have in your fridge just waiting for this moment to shine. (If you don’t, substitute 1/3 cup canned diced tomatoes, preferably San Marzano, drained, plus a little salt and pepper to taste.)

When I told Sam Fromartz, a fantastic home baker who blogs at Chewswise.com, that I was playing around with pizza doughs, he persuaded me to try his take, which uses spelt, an ancient variety of wheat with a wonderfully nutty flavor and without the bitterness of whole wheat flour. Spelt is a little tricky to work with because it stretches very easily, but the addition of white bread flour brings structure. This no-knead dough, based on versions by Jim Lahey and Peter Reinhart, benefits from a long rise, preferably overnight. The result is a very flavorful dough, perfect for home pizza-making. Like the No-Knead Pizza Dough (page 104), it is sticky and loose, but comes together in a beautiful crust. It also requires a little forethought: You can make the dough in the evening for use the next day, or in the morning to use in the evening.

This simple technique, adapted from Jim Lahey of Co. pizza restaurant and Sullivan Street Bakery in New York, is based on his famous no-knead bread. It makes for a very sticky, loose dough that seems as if it won’t be easy to work with, but is very forgiving and performs well with the broiler method featured in the pizza recipes that follow. This dough requires some planning: You can start it in the morning and make pizza that evening, or start it the night before you want pizza for dinner.