Italian

I spend a bundle on mushrooms from a bountiful display at the Dupont Circle FreshFarm Market just about every Sunday—but not in the summer. That’s because mushrooms are available practically year-round (many of them are cultivated), while tomatoes, corn, broccoli, and the like have a shorter season. So I reserve my mushroom purchases for when the bulk of the other seasonal produce has faded or hasn’t quite arrived. In the spring, I love to combine them with one of the items I spend all winter looking forward to: green garlic, basically an immature form of the plant, picked before it has fully formed its bulbous collection of cloves. You can use the whole thing like a leek or green onion (both of them in the same family), but it has the addictive taste of fresh, pungent garlic throughout. Since I also associate spring with eggs, I like to pair them with mushrooms and green garlic in a simple frittata. If you can’t find green garlic or want to make this in another season, feel free to substitute a small leek. Eat this frittata with a side dish, such as salad, bread, and/or hash browns, for a filling meal.

Behind the jubilant liquid tomato smile of pasta margherita lies an intellect of herbs and garlic. The one covering for the other is a seduction of sorts, an invitation that propriety prevents you from accepting too eagerly. Sprinkle your margherita with the crystalline sweetness of Fiore di Cervia, the fine salt from the balmy Adriatic flats south of Ravenna, and marvel as the tart-sweet play of tomato and pasta asserts itself. Ennobled by the salt’s fruity warmth, the sauce is freed of its ties to the herbs that first defined it. Eyes open, head borne aloft, your margherita is as beautiful in body as in spirit.

As a child walking into an Italian restaurant in San Francisco’s North Beach district, I would put on a brave face and glue myself to my father’s side. A cacophony of sensations would accost my nose, my ears, and my staring eyeballs. The smell of stale red wine overlaid with steaming starch. Preoccupied waitresses shoving their heavy bodies through the thick yellow air, moving from table to table with armloads of bread and heaping plates of sea creatures smoldering under garlic and basil. Greasy overhead speakers thumping from their tattered baffles; a dishwasher roaring in the back; and overlaying all, the incessant thudding of a wooden mallet slamming a defenseless piece of chicken or veal. Indifferent to my concern, my father would smile. “Howard!” the restaurant owner would bellow, wading through the crowd to deliver a tumbler of red wine. And the two would launch into boisterous talk about herbs and oils and salt, my dad gesturing appreciatively to the monster with the wood mallet and saying, “Yes, yes, chicken very thin.” For much of my childhood, I thought the measure of a good restaurant was the ferocity of the butcher up front pounding flesh, and the ensuing experience of meat so wonderfully tender and mild that it melted away the world’s hazards. With a flourish of flake salt to accentuate the play of texture and savor on the palate, this paillard is quick, easy, and enormously satisfying. If you like, substitute veal cutlets for the chicken, using Italian parsley in place of the tarragon.

For the porchetta at the RoliRoti truck, Thomas uses a deboned pork middle, cutting out about half of the belly fat and leaving about 1/2 inch of fat on the loin. If you’re unable to find pork middle (a special request item, for sure), he suggests using a skin-on pork belly and wrapping the loin inside of it. Thomas also uses his signature rotisserie. Using a home version would be ideal, but this recipe has been adjusted so that it can be made in a standard oven.

Don’t confuse ricotta salata cheese with ricotta cheese. Made from lightly salted sheep’s milk curd that’s pressed and dried, firm ricotta salata is a notable cheese that originated in Sicily. It has a pleasant salty flavor that’s a little milder than pecorino Romano. Broccoli rabe, sometimes called Italian broccoli, is slightly bitter and earthy and makes an excellent base for a salad. This salad can be made a few hours in advance of serving, and it’s easy to double or triple the recipe for a large group.

This salad is practically a meal in itself, especially if you fan out a beautifully grilled sliced chicken breast or some shrimp on top. Because it contains raw egg, this dressing, which can be made ahead, should be refrigerated and used within three days.

Made in summer at the height of tomato season, this scramble is wonderful with fresh mozzarella or burrata, a delicious, buttery-textured Italian cheese. It’s important not to overcook the tomatoes or the basil, which will keep its bright green color when added toward the end.

Sicily’s cooks make much of the eggplant. They fry it in crisp disks, with mint and vinegar; bake it with tomato sauce and salty caciocavallo cheese; stuff it with anchovies, parsley, and capers; or grill it over charcoal before seasoning with garlic and oregano. Occasionally, they will roll up a thick jam of eggplant in soft disks of dough like a savory strudel, called scaccie, while all the time matching it to the Arab-influenced exotica of their cupboards: anchovies, olives, fennel, mint, pomegranates, currants, and pine nuts. The thin, Turkish eggplant with the bulbous end is the one they prefer, though you could use any shape for their famous caponata, the rich sweet-sour stew braised with celery, golden raisins, vinegar, and bell peppers. I can eat this fragrant, amber slop at any time of year, but somehow I always end up making it when the sun is shining, eating it outside with flat, chewy bread and maybe some grilled sardines flecked with torn mint leaves and lemon. If you make it the day before, its character—salty, sweet, and sour—will have time to settle itself.

Panettone is the famous Christmas bread of Milan, though it is now made and consumed year round. Pandoro, or “golden bread,” originated in Verona and is traditionally baked in starshaped molds, but otherwise bears strong similarities to its more well-known Milanese counterpart. Although this dough can be mixed by hand, it’s very hard to do so because of the long mixing time required, so I recommend using a stand mixer. (You could also use a food processor if you pulse, rather than processing for extended periods.) At first, the dough will be more like a batter, but as you scrape down the mixing bowl, it will eventually form a very supple, delicate dough that feels wonderful to the touch. It can be formed into a ball or other bread shapes, but if you squeeze too hard it will become loose and sticky again. You may want to purchase paper or metal panettone or pandoro molds, which are available at specialty cookware stores. Keep in mind that smaller loaves bake more quickly and are softer and less crusty than larger loaves. Muffin and popover pans, as well as small brioche cups, make nice molds for mini loaves, as do small cans. You’ll end up with a better loaf if you let the dough rise slowly at room temperature rather than force the rise (for example, by placing the dough in a pilot-lit oven, which is a tempting way to speed up the rising time for many doughs). It may take up to 12 hours for the dough to rise and fill the form, but it’s worth the wait. Warmer proofing risks melting the butter in the dough, so the finished product will have the structure of a kugelhopf coffee cake—which isn’t bad, but it doesn’t have the unique peel-apart qualities of the slower-rising panettone or pandoro.

Remember that pizza or focaccia is simply dough with something on it, so feel free to experiment with flavorful toppings. Because focaccia is thicker than pizza it often takes longer to bake, so some toppings are better left off until the final few minutes of baking, especially dry cheeses such as parmesan (focaccia baked in round cake pans perform more like pizzas, so they can be fully topped prior to going into the oven). Some ingredients, like fresh pesto or aioli, are even better when added after the pizza or focaccia has finished baking. Most commercial pizza sauces work fine, but if you enjoy making your own, which is quite easy and highly recommended, remember that canned tomato products do not need to be heated up or cooked since they will be cooked on the pizza or focaccia. Here are my favorite sauce and herb oil recipes.

Puntarelles (shown opposite) are a bitter green used in Italian cuisine, particularly in Rome, where they are served with a dressing of anchovies, garlic, and olive oil. Before eating, soak the puntarelles in ice water for at least 1 hour or up to 12 hours. The longer they soak, the more the bitterness mellows, and the stems become crisp and curly. The strong flavors of the anchovies and garlic, along with the fat from the olive oil, evoke a surprising sweetness from the puntarelles. The overall flavor is similar to that of a Caesar salad, but with a deep, earthy note from the dark greens. Try this salad with the Tortilla Española (page 36) for a beautiful summer meal with Mediterranean flavors.

This recipe pairs two foods you might find on a spring hike: morels and ramps, the latter being the wild leeks that grow from South Carolina to Canada. Both have the fresh earthiness of spring, tempered here by the richness of Grana Padano and mascarpone. Buying morels can get expensive, so if you can only afford a few, you can make up for it by adding another portobello or two. If you can’t find the pasta called orecchiette (literally, “little ears”), use small shells or another bite-size pasta.

Choose your favorite fall fruit to adorn this sweet focaccia. The great Italian cook who taught me how to make it recommended throwing three tablespoons of water into the lower part of the oven (below the pan of focaccia) three times during the first ten minutes of baking. The steam created results in a crispier crust. Try it, but be careful not to extinguish the pilot light or soak the focaccia!

I love the smoky flavor of eggplants charred on the stovetop. A “quick and dirty” technique used in restaurants, cooking eggplants on an open flame gets a little messy, but it’s fast. This savory pie is made with traditional Italian ingredients and brightened with fresh herbs. Slice it into wedges and serve as a main course, or cut it into small squares for an appetizer. Serve with a simple green salad and fresh bread.

This dish first caught my eye early in my career when I worked as a line cook at Chicago’s legendary Ambria Restaurant. We served it as an appetizer, making everything from scratch, including the pasta—and it was one of our most popular dishes. This is a perfect dish for dinner parties. I promise it will impress your guests. Follow the fresh Egg Pasta recipe on page 109, making sure you include the optional squid ink.

I still remember the first time I tasted this dish. I was sixteen years old and working my first cooking job to earn some pocket money at a restaurant in my hometown that served European food. Until then, I had almost no exposure to Western cooking (I hadn’t even tried pizza yet!). This dish was a bit of a culture shock for me, but I quickly became enchanted with Italian pasta. For the recipe, you can substitute ground veal or ground pork, if you like. Any leftover sauce can be frozen for up to a month.

This is the master recipe for egg pasta to accompany three dishes in the book: Squid-Ink Pasta with Crabmeat-Stuffed Squid (page 124), Fresh Egg Pasta with Seared Lamb (page 109), and Fresh Egg Pasta with Pork Loin (page 128). Adding squid ink to this recipe turns the pasta almost black and makes a dramatic presentation. It adds a subtle ocean flavor to a dish that’s absolutely sublime. I first started preparing squid-ink pasta at Ambria Restaurant, the legendary Chicago fine dining restaurant where I cooked for nine years.

Sabayon is the French name for zabaglione, a light foamy Italian dessert. It is served warm in glasses or coupes or spooned over a dessert, fruit, or pastry as a topping. Traditionally, it is made with Marsala or port, but it may be prepared using other wines and liqueurs. Use the freshest berries in season. Try all the same berry, or mix them up for a colorful treat.

Like many recipes of humble country origins, there is no carved-in-stone recipe for minestrone, the iconic Italian vegetable soup. Mamas from both sides of the Atlantic have used fresh seasonal vegetables with a bit of hambone or cheese rind to prepare soulful, satisfying soups. We’ve long known that this combination tastes good. Now we have a name for why it does: umami. The Japanese term umami is now familiar to culinary professionals, chefs, and informed foodies, yet Asian cooks have appreciated the taste for centuries. It is the fifth taste after sour, salty, bitter, and sweet. Scientifically, umami is the distinctive flavor of amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein. Think about classic Caesar salad dressing, a combination of egg protein and salted anchovies. Or old-fashioned greens simmered with ham. Or this soup, in which the rind of the Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese complements the vegetables in the tomato broth.