Food Processor

GINA Fish tacos—you gotta love them. But of course seafood has always been my thing. The key to this dish lies in the freshness of your coleslaw. You can always use store-bought, but our recipe is so quick, and making it fresh adds a crispness that I’m not too sure store-bought can provide. Also, the jalapeño pepper in the slaw, combined with the chipotle mayo, makes our slaw smoky and spicy! I think catfish works better than other fish, because it has a good way of standing up to the heat of the frying pan . . . plus, I just love the flavor. This may be because our family had a tradition of eating catfish every Friday night for dinner. (We were probably making fish tacos before they got a fancy reputation.) And I have this thing about wraps—because you can pile everything into them and then just munch it down.

You can customize these crumbs with lemon zest, oregano, parsley, or other herbs. Simply reprocess the crumbs with the herbs after you have finished the basic recipe. They have a thousand uses, and are excellent as a topping for oysters, artichokes, pastas, and more.

This kicky sauce is matched in flavor by its dramatic green color. Bright with parsley and with deep notes from the anchovy, salsa verde makes plain grilled fish or meat into something you want to serve to company, and it adds an herby note to rich organ meats or tongue. Try adding a spoonful to soups or tossing with plain boiled potatoes.

Mayonnaise has an undeserved reputation for being difficult to make. With an egg yolk and some mustard as binders, and the help of a food processor when adding the oil, homemade mayo is as easy to make as it is delicious.

If you master any one recipe in this book, this should be it. Not only does a bright, fresh tomato sauce turn any freshly made pasta into an event, but it’s also an indispensable component in dishes from basic ragus to Maloreddus with Squid, Tomato Sauce, and Lemon (page 97) and Linguine with Shrimp (page 90). Part of the fun of making your own sauce is squishing the whole tomatoes—and they must be San Marzanos—with your fingers. It can get messy, especially for those of us who wear glasses, but it’s worth it (and a good stress-reduction technique, to boot). Find an apron and get ready for a simple, well-balanced sauce that you’ll always want to have on hand. And when you can have this sauce ready in under an hour, why ever open a jar again?

They say that pumpkin pie is one of the scents that men react to most strongly. I’m not sure if I agree, but I think that by combining a smooth pumpkin filling with a chocolate crust, you have a good chance of getting your guests’ attention. I roast the pumpkin in the oven to ensure the filling isn’t watery. It’s really not possible to overcook the pumpkin; in fact, the longer you cook it, the more the flavors become concentrated. If you can’t find a sugar pumpkin, butternut squash or another hard-skinned fall squash would make a fine substitute. You can roast the pumpkin and bake the crusts at the same time, speeding the process along.

I love how Italians use nuts in desserts, from almond cake to pine nut tarts. Here, those same pine nuts transform the humble cookie into something truly special. Crumbly, yes, but not too sweet—just delicate and fabulous. For a variation, try filling the thumbprints with homemade jam. Rhubarb would be delicious, making each cookie taste a little like PB&J.

If you have a mom or grandmother who baked when you were a kid, this not-too-sweet dessert should ring the bells of nostalgia for you. A cookie designed to emulate those cinnamon-and-sugared scraps of leftover pie dough, these pretty pinwheels can cozy up quite happily to a cup of tea, or would make a welcome finishing touch to an evening espresso.

I can’t decide whether I love the color—a pale celadon—or the exotic flavor of this ice cream more. The pear causes the base to have a thinner consistency than some other ice creams have before freezing, but the final texture is lovely. It’s hard to peg the flavor as star anise in the ice cream, because the spice mellows with the cold and the cream, but it’s addictive. This isn’t a scoop-in-a-cone kind of dessert, but an elegant cookie on the side would be nice.

Cacio Faenum is a fragrant sheep’s milk cheese that, like little baby Jesus, is lovingly laid on a bed of hay to rest. Unlike the newborn king, however, the cheese is actually wrapped in dried grass and buried in a hay-filled barrel for a little more than a month. You’ll recognize this incredible cheese by its charming hay wrapper and a grassy, barn-y fragrance that marries nicely with the earthiness of apricots and almonds.

Though this recipe sounds straight out of a Coen brothers’ movie, the name refers to the fact that you chop off the squids’ arms and stuff them inside their own bodies. Trust me—this is my kind of punishment. I use cooked Controne beans as a binder instead of breadcrumbs, ensuring the filling is creamy and light, and I add slab bacon for a hit of smoke and texture. When you grill the tentacles, remember that you’re just precooking them and don’t leave them on the heat too long. Another key to this dish is ensuring that your filling is at room temperature before you stuff the squid. If it’s too cold, you’ll overcook the bodies while you heat the stuffing through. If you want to stuff the squid earlier in the day, just take them out of the fridge about a half hour before grilling.

The classic French preparation for snails—bathed in puddles of garlic butter—formed the inspiration for this pasta. Although the agnolotti would be spectacular on their own, wearing only the barest of sauces, adding briny snails and a bright, intensely flavored compound butter makes the dish that much more special. You can find good-quality canned snails at European markets and some high-end grocery stores. Wait to make your sauce until the pasta is cooking; if you heat the butter too far ahead of time, the herbs might brown.

Think of these as the most decadent, upscale version of a deviled egg you’ll ever eat. But instead of rubbery eggs sprinkled with paprika, these soft-boiled beauties reveal moist, velvety yolks, accented by a luxe anchovy mayo. This is the recipe where you want your eggs to be as fresh as possible. Short of keeping your own chickens, go to your farmers’ market and buy local. Don’t get all freaked out if they have a bit of straw or dirt or, um, other debris on the shells. It means they’re fresh, plus eggs have a natural antibiotic coating that protects them until you wash them. Inside, you’ll find bright orange-yellow yolks and an incredible flavor that supermarket eggs just don’t offer.

This dish channels the best of the clam shacks that dot the East Coast. Here, a crunchy cornmeal coating and a quick dip in hot oil render these soft-shell clams succulent and juicy. As an accompaniment, chopped sorrel gives aioli a lemony lift and gorgeous color for a nice twist on tartar sauce. For fun, serve them to your guests the way we do in the restaurants—in little paper cones. They’re not hard to fold, make for great oil-absorbing containers, and make you feel like you’re on the boardwalk.