Cheese

This old favorite is a quick snack or accompaniment to a simple soup and salad meal. You can get the bread ready for roasting as the oven preheats. In the summer, I like to serve slices of toasted bread with a topping of chopped or thinly sliced fresh tomatoes from the garden.

This is a great sauce, almost a universal pasta dressing, but particularly suitable for malloreddus. Because it is so good and useful, I make it in large batches and pack it in small portions for freezing. There are times when I want to make some pasta for two (or sometimes just for me), and there’s nothing better than having a small container of tomato-sausage sauce on hand to dress it.

Gallura is the traditional name for the northeastern corner of Sardinia, across from Corsica, and the region’s distinctive dialect and delicious dishes are termed Gallurese. Here is a most unusual rendition of zuppa Gallurese. Surprisingly, it comes in the form of a casserole, with layers of bread, Savoy cabbage, provolone, and pecorino, drenched in chicken stock and baked. The end result is an amazing dish that has the comforting character of a soup and the cheesy lusciousness of a lasagna or pasticciata. I know you will find it delightful.

This tasty and easy casserole is a wonderful way to enjoy homemade fregola and makes a great accompaniment to braised chicken or veal. If I have not convinced you to make your own, use packaged dried fregola, available at specialty stores or online. Commercial fregola is usually a bit larger than the homemade, so follow the package guidelines for cooking the pasta al dente.

Our friend Franco Azzara made this memorable pasta dish for us during a recent visit to his home in the Gallura region of Sardinia. I marveled at how quickly he put it together, and at the complex flavor of the raw sauce—just fresh tomatoes, basil and mint, and other savory seasonings, whipped up in a food processor, no cooking necessary. I thank him for sharing this Azzara family recipe, one that I know you will enjoy both for its ease and convenience and for its brilliant flavors.

Juicy pork chops, smothered with slowly cooked onions and topped with melted cheese, are certain to make mouths water. You can prepare these in advance—browning the chops and cooking the onions—then complete the skillet cooking and baking as your guests are seated. Thick chops from the pork loin are my favorite, and the ones used in the recipe. Leaner rib chops will work as well but should be cooked a few minutes less.

If you are traveling in Sardinia, this is the dish to have. And if you want a taste of Sardinia at home, this is the dish to make. Pardulas resemble large ravioli, stuffed with sliced provolone. They’re not cooked like pasta, though, but fried until crisp and oozing melted cheese. They’re like grilled cheese sandwiches—kids love them. In fact, everybody does. Pardulas make a great appetizer flanked by some tossed salad or sliced tomatoes. For a more elaborate and substantial turnover, add some blanched asparagus or broccoli, or prosciutto or ham, to the stuffing; just cut down a bit on the cheese to make room. And if you make them half-sized, they’re a terrific hors d’oeuvre to pass at a cocktail party. They are traditionally served drizzled with honey but are delicious just fried and plain. For convenience, make and fill pardulas in advance and fry them when your guests arrive. If necessary, you can fry them up to 30 minutes ahead of time and keep them warm in the oven.

Pane frattau is a traditional dish of Sardinian shepherds, made from pane carasau, the thin, long-keeping flatbreads that were a staple food during the shepherds’ extended sojourns in mountain pastures. Some clever shepherd discovered long ago, I imagine, that he could turn the dry bread into a fast, warm meal by soaking and layering it with hot tomato sauce and cheese, lasagna-style. Now considered a classic of Sardinian cooking, pane frattau is a dish that I love to make at home. No baking is required, and everything can be heated on the stovetop (quicker than a shepherd’s campfire, I am sure) and quickly assembled. With a perfectly poached or fried egg as the crowning touch, it makes a beautiful brunch or supper dish, belying its peasant origins. Regard this recipe as a guideline. Though the listed ingredient amounts serve four, you can multiply them to serve a crowd or divide them to make pane frattau for two—or just for yourself. I recommend my Tomato Sauce (page 385), but any basic tomato sauce of your choice would be fine, too. And though I prefer poached eggs to top the pane frattau, a fried egg, sunny side up, would be just as authentic and satisfying. Either way, just be sure to cook the eggs at the last minute and serve the dish right away. I also suggest that you try layering pane frattau as is rather than water-soaked pane carasau. It is great that way, too!

In Calabria, as in other regions of southern Italy, there’s a general preference for dried pasta, even for baked stuffed pastas. Usually, stuffed pastas like canneloni or manicotti are formed from flat pieces of fresh pasta, topped with filling, and then rolled up to make the familiar tube shape. But with this recipe, you stuff pasta for baking as they do it in Calabria, using the dried tubular pasta called paccheri; first cook them just to soften, then spoon in a savory sausage-and-ricotta filling. Fill a big pan with the stuffed paccheri, drape them with tomato sauce and grated cheese, and bake. As with other baked pasta casseroles, you can multiply this recipe many times and make enough schiaffettoni to feed any size crowd. The individual paccheri can be stuffed and the big pan (or pans) fully assembled in advance; bake at the last minute, while your guests are being seated. And best of all, you know everyone will love it.

I love baked pastas of all kinds (as you probably know), as long as the gratinato, the cheese topping, is properly applied with a light touch, and baked sufficiently, so the cheese is deeply colored, melted, and perfectly crisp at the same time. This Calabrian baked cavatappi has two touches I particularly appreciate: a layer of sliced hard-cooked eggs inside (lending more taste and more protein), and an extra dimension of crunch from bread crumbs on top. You can enhance many other baked pasta recipes this way.

As the name of this traditional dish suggests, it is made from the few ingredients available to a shepherd in remote pastures. Yet, in my experience, some of the best pasta sauces in Italy come from such a limited larder of ingredients. A fine example is this dressing for rigatoni, created with a bit of sausage, dried grating cheese, fresh ricotta, peperoncino, and fresh basil. And if you toss in other fresh herbs in season, your rigatoni alla pastora will have a slightly different taste each time.

A technique I have always liked, when preparing vegetables for a pasta dish, is to toss them in the pot with the pasta as it boils. Depending on which takes longer, I put the vegetable in first and then add the pasta, or vice versa. Either way, I believe this maximizes the flavor and nutritional value of the vegetables, and I know the pasta absorbs some of the vegetable flavor as they cook in the same water. I was glad to see this technique used frequently in preparing pasta dishes in Calabria, like this one, where orecchiette and arugula are cooked in the pot together before they are tossed with the other dressing vegetables, favas, and cherry tomatoes. Great to make in spring when fresh favas are in the market.

Like many traditional Lucani dishes, this one is fashioned from the handful of ingredients one would find even in the most humble peasant pantry: dried peppers, yesterday’s bread, a chunk of hard cheese, olive oil, and garlic. Minimal yet delicious. The fire in fiery maccheroni, of course, comes from dried diavolicchio, the hot chili peppers so beloved in Basilicata and other southern regions. Here, whole dried peperoncino pods are soaked until soft, then puréed into a pesto to dress the pasta. Toasted bread crumbs play an important role in this dish, too, when they’re tossed in just before serving. They pick up the paste and garlicky olive oil, cling to the strands of pasta (preferably bucatini or perciatelli), and give crunchy, fiery sparks of flavor to every enjoyable bite.

This is one of those bountiful braises that you make when you want to delight a big table of family or friends, offering them an assortment of tender meats and pasta dressed with the braising sauce. Like other slowly cooked braises, this gives you two courses from one saucepan. Serve pasta dressed with the meaty-tasting tomato sauce as a first course—there’s enough to dress 2 pounds of rigatoni. And then serve the pork, veal, and sausage as a second course. Of course, you don’t have to serve it all for the same meal. Use half the sauce to dress a pound of pasta, freeze the rest, and you have a future meal all ready to go. And after serving the ragù, take any leftover bits and pieces of meat, shred and chop them up, clean the meat from the veal-chop bone, and blend all of it in with any leftover sauce. I bet you’ll have enough sauce with meaty morsels for a lasagna or other baked pasta—yet another meal from that one big braising pan.

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.

Life in the hilly inland of Molise was for centuries a pastoral existence, and the traditional staples of the pastoral table are still essential elements in cooking alla Molisana. Ricotta, a nutritious and always available by-product of cheesemaking, thus appears on the table in many forms, such as gnocchi, with pastas and vegetables, and in soups—or eaten just plain, with bread. Here’s one of the most delicious ways that ricotta can be enjoyed: drained, shaped in small pieces, breaded, and fried, ricotta fritta gains new dimensions of texture and flavor. Serve these fried ricotta morsels as a savory appetizer or main course, in a puddle of tomato sauce or on top of braised vegetables. On the other hand, if you top them with some poached peaches or peach preserve or fruit jam with a dollop of whipped cream, you have a glorious dessert.

This wonderful country-style pasta dish requires almost no cooking, but fresh, flavorful ingredients are essential. Most important is to find fresh whole-milk ricotta (not the processed, packaged variety), often sold in good Italian markets and whole-food stores. If you can find artisan-made sheep’s- or goat’s-milk ricotta, that would be best of all. Another key ingredient is dry pasta made from farro, a kind of wheat berry usually cooked as a whole grain (try my Farro with Roasted Pepper Sauce, page 167). Farro pasta is quite popular in Abruzzo and is manufactured there, in many shapes, by both small artisanal pastifici (pasta factories) and the big pasta companies. Look for it in your market, or order it online (see Sources, page 387); either ziti or spaghetti would be my choice for this dish. It is delicious, nutritious, and moderately priced. You’ll also need tender rucola (arugula), good grated pecorino, and excellent extra-virgin olive oil. Once you have all your ingredients, the preparation is fast and easy.

These crispy, savory balls, simmering in tomato sauce, are delicious and surprising: though they have all the texture and flavor that a meatball-lover would ask for, there’s not a bit of meat in them—just eggs, grated cheese, and bread crumbs plus garlic and basil. They are certainly a testament to the ingenuity of Abruzzese cooks, who have fashioned the simplest staples of a rustic kitchen into a treat for all occasions. Serve the polpettine as a special snack or party hors d’oeuvre—when they’re freshly fried and crispy, you won’t even need any sauce. And with the sauce, they make a delightful primo or vegetarian main course. A good-quality pecorino for grating is essential here and will give you the most authentic flavor. If you’ve found one you like, use it exclusively in the polpettine and for serving. If your pecorino is sharp and/or salty, substitute Grana Padano or Parmigiano-Reggiano for half the cheese in the recipe.