Cheese

One summer, the peaches were so amazing that I didn’t want to do anything to them. Unfortunately, you can’t put a peach on a plate and send it out to a customer. So I chose ingredients—mellow cheeses, sweet and crunchy pistachios, and a mild balsamic vinegar glaze—that complemented the sweet raw peach.

Chef Alex Lee used to serve a tomato mosaic at Daniel, and when I got two super-ripe watermelons, one yellow and one red, I mimicked the appearance of his savory dish on my dessert menu. The cheese and granité add depth of flavor. I’m not giving you a yield here, since this is more of a combination of flavors than anything, and you can make as many as you like.

So this, my finale, is the ultimate in Everyday Italian cooking. Sure, there’s some cheating involved—I’m not asking you to bake a pound cake. But this distinct combination of Italian flavors will transport you to a piazza-side café, nibbling this great dessert, sipping espressos, and people-watching, instead of struggling in the kitchen for hours upon end. That’s been my goal in this book. I hope I’ve succeeded

It looks complicated, but all the steps are actually easy, and it will be such a hit. I like to make tiramisù the day before so that the cookies have enough time to absorb all the flavors and the tiramisù has time to set. Tiramisù means “pick-me-up,” and boy oh boy will it pick you up.

Pineapple doesn’t quite qualify as Italian, but Nutella (a chocolate-hazelnut spread) is definitely an Italian favorite of cult-like proportions, so this can certainly pass as an Italian-American recipe. Grilling the pineapple enhances its sweet flavor, provides the great grill marks, and of course warms it up, bringing a new level of comfort to this incredibly comforting dessert.

Cannoli (“pipes”) are said to be one of the unshakable rocks of Sicilian desserts, and these days they can be found in almost every Italian pastry shop in America. They are crispy fried pastry tubes that are filled with sweetened ricotta cheese or sometimes pastry cream. The tubes are time-consuming to make, but the filling is easy, and dolloped over fresh berries, well, it just brings me home.

In the summer, I like to buy large bags or baskets of fresh peaches at the farmers’ market. I eat the perfectly ripe ones immediately and use the firmer (but still ripe) specimens for this amazing dessert combo. But do be sure that your peaches are a little firm; if they’re going soft all over, they’ll fall apart on the grill. Add the cheese mixture right before you serve it so it looks fresh.

I love mashed potatoes as much as the next person, but most recipes take a long time—and a lot of elbow grease—to make. So I smash the unpeeled, cooked potatoes with a fork to save time, and I add olive oil and Parmesan cheese to make them rich and velvety. And that’s it!

Even though this dish uses only zucchini, my grandmother called it Verdure al Forno, which means “vegetables in the oven.” (So it should really be called Zucchine al Forno, but there was absolutely no way anybody would tell that to my grandmother.) You could substitute eggplant, summer squash, potatoes, or even cauliflower for the zucchini, and make this your very own Verdure al Forno.

Note that the ingredients here are something of a hodgepodge: potato and sweet potato, zucchini and carrot, onion and bell pepper. That’s because this is a pretty loose recipe, and you should feel free to substitute whatever you prefer. Just be sure to cut any vegetables to roughly the same size, to ensure that they’re all fully cooked—but not overcooked—at the same time.

I often serve these tomatoes at room temperature, and believe me, it’s a real relief to be able to serve a dish to which you have to do absolutely nothing while your guests are in your home, other than put it on a plate. That’s truly Everyday Italian cooking.

In Italy, one of the most popular recipes for stuffed mushrooms hails from Liguria, the northern region that stretches along the Mediterranean coast (actually, the body of water here is called the Ligurian Sea) from the border of France all the way down to Tuscany. The capital of the region is Genoa, which on the one hand is the birthplace of pesto, and on the other is a port city where seafood is worked into recipes where you wouldn’t necessarily expect it. Like mushrooms, for example, which they stuff with salted anchovies, marjoram, and bread crumbs. That recipe is a little complex, so I’ve omitted the little fishes and simplified. This is not only a great side dish, but also the perfect antipasto for a casual get-together.

Eggplant Parmesan is one of the classic red-checkered-tablecloth Italian-American recipes, but I prefer this slightly easier and lighter recipe, with a very similar concept—combining eggplant with cheese and marinara sauce. This makes an elegant, satisfying side dish as well as a great entrée for a vegetarian meal (make sure your vegetarians eat dairy, though—there’s lots of it here). You could also make this dish with zucchini.

The beauty of a dish like this is that you get just enough meat to feel satisfied that you’ve had a substantial meal, but you’ve actually consumed a much greater proportion of healthy greens than of red meat. Plus, it can serve four people on the budget of one steak.

These breaded cutlets are usually made with veal, but I’ve found that it’s an excellent treatment for pork chops. As kids, my siblings and I loved this dish—what kids don’t love fried meat? And it makes for a tasty sandwich the next day (see page 184).

The word braciola is used in different regions of Italy to describe different cuts of meat. But in southern Italy, braciola refers to a dish where a slice of meat is topped with different ingredients and rolled up and baked. It’s moist, rich, and very flavorful, and it’s actually easy to make, although not quick: In order to make this cut of meat moist and tasty, it needs a good amount of oven time. I like to serve it at holiday dinner parties or for Sunday supper. You will need kitchen twine to tie the rolled flank steak.

Perhaps the all-time number-one most popular Italian-American dish, Chicken Parmesan is often made of thickly breaded chicken cutlets topped with way too much cheese and garlicky tomato sauce. (And in many restaurants, if you can locate the actual Parmesan in the “Chicken Parmesan,” you should win a huge prize.) I wanted to remain true to the heartiness of the dish, but I also wanted to lighten it up a bit. So I don’t bread my cutlets, but instead brown them in a skillet before adding the topping and baking them.

Arancini di Riso means “little orange rice balls”—orange, because the risotto was traditionally made with saffron (the version called Risotto Milanese), which gives the rice an orange tint. This recipe is one of the many brilliant ways that Italians have for using up leftovers.

As an alternative to mashed potatoes, try making this mouthwatering polenta. Nearly any easily melted cheese will do, but I happen to love the taste of the king of Italian blue cheese, Gorgonzola. It’s available in either sweet (dolce) or more tangy (piccante) versions, and the choice is really up to you. If you have access to a good cheese counter, they’ll let you taste before you buy. And if Gorgonzola isn’t available but you still want to make this dish—and trust me, you really do—you can use any good blue cheese, such as Roquefort, Stilton, or Bleu d’Auvergne.

The secret to the intense mushroom flavor in this recipe is that not only are mushrooms themselves part of the mix, but the risotto is cooked with mushroom-flavored broth. In order to use dried porcini mushrooms—or any dried mushrooms for that matter—you have to reconstitute them by allowing them to sit in hot water for a few minutes, absorbing that water and plumping up. Then the mushrooms are ready to cook with, and you have all this flavorful liquid as a by-product. By all means, take advantage of it: Here, it works as a flavor booster to the chicken stock; but you can also use it as the base of a wonderful soup or sauce.