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When traveling through Sicily, you will often encounter tuna or swordfish rollatini—or involtini, as the Sicilians call them. It is a traditional dish. What makes the dish particularly delicious and interesting is that they roll the rollatini in seasoned bread crumbs before grilling. The way I prepare the rollatini, they get a marvelous range of flavors by marinating before grilling in garlic, olive oil, and fresh thyme; then I smother them with a fresh tomato-and-lemon salsa after they’ve cooked (and try not to eat them for a couple of hours). The longer they sit—before and after grilling—the more flavorful they become. This is also a versatile preparation. Make as many rollatini as you want from a big piece of tuna, as I explain in the box, and schedule their marinating periods and quick grilling to your convenience. Serve them hot off the grill or later, at room temperature, when they taste even better. One rollatino makes a beautiful first course; two make a satisfying main course; a few rollatini slices make a terrific tuna sandwich for a picnic. And if you want to enjoy these any time of year—or if you don’t have a grill—just pop them in your oven (see below).

Fresh cod fillets are flaky and sweet and a favorite in my family for baking or broiling. In summer, I love thick cod steaks, cooked on the grill. Unlike fish more commonly cut for steaks—tuna, swordfish, shark, and others with firm texture—the softer flesh of cod can be a challenge to the griller, sometimes sticking to the rack or flaking apart. These problems are lessened by tying the steaks with twine, marinating in garlic oil, and searing on a hot clean grill. But even if you lose the perfect appearance or a flake of fish tears off, cod steaks are so sweet and delicious when grilled, it’s worth it. I serve cod with any (or all) of the cold sauces listed below; grilled lemon slices (see below) are a nice garnish too. Follow this basic procedure for any fish steak—tuna and the other firm-fleshed ones, or salmon, halibut, or bass.

Poached zucchini, cut into rounds or cubes, is a terrific salad ingredient. This salad is a lovely combination of tastes and colors, but you can follow the same basic approach without the potatoes, without the eggs, or even without the onions. If you are preparing zucchini and potatoes for salad, it’s easy to cook them in one pot of water. Start boiling them together and remove the zucchini when they are “droopy,” as described in the main recipe. Usually the potatoes will need to cook a bit longer, until they are easily pierced with a fork or sharp knife. Let everything cool, then toss your salad and dress it just before serving.

Poaching is not a common preparation here in the U.S., but in season all over Italy you will be served zucchini cooked this way, simply seasoned with salt and olive oil. It is a perfect method when excellent zucchini are abundant—convenient to do the cooking ahead. Let the zucchini cool and you can serve them many delicious ways—as an appetizer, a side dish, or the centerpiece of a summer salad. (See below for some good ideas.) You can expand this recipe as much as you want for large parties.

These crispy, cheesy, caramelized florets of broccoli and cauliflower are a wonderful mealtime vegetable. But they’re so tempting, easy to pick up and pop in your mouth, that they would make a hard-to-resist impromptu hors d’oeuvre before dinner begins. You can prepare either broccoli or cauliflower alone with this recipe, though a combination is especially colorful. The florets are partly cooked by my covered-skillet method, then tossed with grated cheese and bread crumbs and baked until golden. The cauliflower and broccoli cook at different rates in the skillet, as detailed in the recipe. If you’re preparing just one kind of florets, simply adjust your timing.

I love making risotto for family meals. It’s not something I have time for every day—it takes a good 30 minutes, mostly at the stove—but it is one of those special dishes that focus my attention and engage all my senses in the amazing processes of cooking. I smell, see, and taste what’s in the risotto pan, of course, but I am listening too: for the clicking sound that tells me the rice grains are sufficiently toasted and it’s time to splash them with wine; for the distinctive bubbling as each addition of cooking liquid disappears in the pot, which tells me the rice is ready for more. If I’ve stepped away from the stove—I do take a break from stirring risotto now and then, and you can too—that sound brings me back. I add more liquid and stir (and stir and stir), and feel, through the wooden spoon in my fingers, the corner of the pan where the rice is almost sticking, the resistance that tells me yet another cup of broth is needed before I wander away again. The Basic Risotto recipe that follows is one that will give you this marvelous engagement of the senses. It’s a simple formula that will let you focus on the critical steps in cooking—in the end, creating a great risotto is 100 percent technique—not on a long list of ingredients. You can make this right out of the cupboard, building flavor and superb texture with just olive oil, onions, rice, wine, water, salt, and cheese. Nothing else, not even butter, is necessary. I give you choices, though: use butter or leeks or broth if you want, or more or less of the ingredients listed in ranges. I want you in the driver’s seat, following your senses and tastes, to achieve the texture and flavor you like best (see more on these choices in the box on page 228). With risotto, you see, it is more important that you understand what you are doing than that you add things in prescribed amounts. When you are in control of what’s happening in the pot, you will feel how powerful a few ingredients and a few techniques can be in creating an outstanding dish. To sharpen your focus, you’ll find each step of the recipe instructions accompanied by a brief explanation of its purpose and the chemistry of risotto—these are short, and, believe me, you will have plenty of time to read them while you are stirring! And if you have further questions about risotto, write me at www.lidiasitaly.com. I love teaching about this precious treasure of Italian cooking.

This appetizer torta is made with chilled polenta, not soft polenta like a pasticciata. It’s as rich as any dessert cake but much simpler and faster. Make it in any size you want, but even this small cake will be enough to serve six uninhibited eaters.

Gnudi means “naked dumpling,” because it’s truly a stuffing without a pasta shell. So if you love those stuffings in ravioli, skip the pasta—this dish is for you.

Almost every region of northern Italy has some version of potato-stuffed ravioli. The potato is a constant, whereas the flavoring may change, from onion to chard to raisins to pine nuts. You can come up with some of your favorites. But in my house everybody loves potato-and-bacon ravioli, even fussy kids. You can do all the cooking ahead of time if you want—just mash up the filling while it’s still warm, then refrigerate.

This delicate and quite simple ravioli is a lovely way to enjoy the affinity of pear and cheese. The filling is a lively blend of shredded ripe pear, shredded 3- to-6-months-aged Pecorino Romano (it should be semisoft), and mascarpone—just stirred together at the last moment.

Small shrimp cook right inside these very fresh-tasting ravioli. You don’t need fancy big shrimp for this: small and inexpensive “41/50s” (which means there are forty-one to fifty shrimp in a pound) are a good size, or even smaller rock shrimp. Make the simple flavored butter a bit ahead of time, and chill it in the freezer to facilitate handling.

This is a simple, pure version of cheese ravioli, without the eggs that are usually added to firm up the filling. Use fresh whole-milk ricotta with large curds and drain it thoroughly to get the best consistency. With creamy fillings such as this one, I feel that a slightly thicker dough provides more texture and is preferable to a very thin dough. If you roll your dough strips to get eighteen or twenty ravioli—following the guidelines below—that’s better than trying to stretch them to get twenty-four. All you need is enough sauce to coat the ravioli lightly. So those small portions of sauces you have saved in the freezer might be just enough to dress a batch.

Spinach pasta is essential to Pasticciata Bolognese (page 200), but you can enjoy it in all the cuts and shapes of fresh pasta. It is best to start prepping the spinach well ahead of time, as detailed in the recipe, for the best texture. You can always freeze the dough until you need it. Spinach pasta is usually more moist than other fresh pastas and so will cook more quickly.

These three pasta doughs look almost identical on paper all purpose flour, eggs, olive oil, water. So you may wonder: How do I know which one to make? Which is the best? The truth is, I’d love to have you make all three so you can see and feel and taste the big differences that result from small variations. And you will realize there is no single “best.” As Italian cooks know, you can mix flour into a fine pasta dough with whatever eggoil water mixture you like, whatever is available in the pantry, or whatever you can afford. This last factor in particular reflects the way pasta has fit into Italian life for centuries: The rich man can have his cook make pasta moistened entirely with fat-laden, tasty egg yolks. A poor family might make their Sunday pasta with one precious egg (and have weekday pasta mixed only with water and a bit of oil). And families in between make pasta with the ingredients they have. But don’t be fooled. The richest is not necessarily best. With two eggs and a goodly amount of extra-virgin olive oil, Poor Man’s Pasta is quite rich and delicious (frankly, it’s my favorite). Part of the fun is in mixing and matching the right pasta with the most compatible sauce, and you’ll find guidance in the pages ahead as well as the challenge to try your own pairings.

Corn is a nice addition to minestra—it adds texture and sweetness. It is also a good addition to other vegetable soups, such as fresh fennel, zucchini, or chicory and white bean.

Cook rice just before serving to get the consistency of soup you like: 1/4 cup of rice per quart of base for a lighter minestra, and up to 1/2 cup of rice for a hefty and hearty minestra.

I can still hear the staccato clack-clack-clack of my grandmother’s cleaver on a wooden board as she chopped the pestata, the fine paste of pork fat, garlic, and rosemary, that gave so much flavor to her rich minestra. Occasionally, she would pause and hand me the cleaver: I’d dip it in the boiling soup pot, already full of beans and potatoes, and watch the tiny specks of fat whirl into the broth. After a few moments I’d hand the cleaver back to my nonna, and instantly she’d be chopping again, the hot blade literally melting the thick fat, while the aroma of garlic and pork and beans and rosemary filled the kitchen.... Precious memories! But today I make pestata in the food processor in about 10 seconds! In most ways, however, this minestra is just like my grandmother’s. It cooks for a long time—give it 3 full hours if you can—steadily drawing flavor from pork bones and a soffritto of onion and tomato, and slowly reducing in the soup pot. You’ll have 4 quarts of minestra base, to finish with any of the additions I suggest here, or with other vegetables or grains. Long-grain white rice or small pasta can be added to almost any variation for a denser minestra. For a thicker, smooth consistency, remove some of the beans (a third to a half) before adding the finishing vegetables; purée them, and stir back into the pot for the final cooking.