Simple Cooking

Italians famously eat a lot of beans, so including shell beans on our menu was an obvious choice. Shell beans are so delicious and can be prepared in such a variety of ways, and yet you don’t normally see them at conventional grocery stores. Looking for shell beans is a good excuse to visit your local farmers’ market, which is where we find them in Los Angeles in the late summer and early fall. We use a mix of four types of shell beans—borlotti beans, cannellini beans, lima beans, and flageolet—because we like the range of sizes, colors, and flavors of the various beans. Properly cooking beans is about 90 percent of the battle, which is why we cook each type of bean separately; to spare yourself the effort, use fewer varieties of beans. If you don’t have access to shell beans, or when shell beans are not in season, you could make this using dried beans. Refer to Ceci (page 96) for instructions. The recipe for the bouquet is for each pot of beans. You will need to make the same number as types of beans you are making.

The first place I was served fava bean pods, as opposed to shelled beans, was at Zuni Café in San Francisco. When they came to the table, I thought it was such an interesting idea, and when I tasted them I found them delicious. When you serve them this way, you want to use only tender, young, small pods, as larger pods will be tough and fibrous. If you can’t get young fave, use jumbo asparagus instead. In either case, this is a spring dish.

Caponata, a traditional Sicilian eggplant preparation, is the perfect example of agrodolce, the Italian word for combining sweet and sour flavors in savory dishes. When people order this antipasto at the Pizzeria, we suggest they also get an order of Fett’Unta (page 65) to absorb the delicious flavors of the caponata. Caponata is an ideal dish to serve at a party, because you can prepare it in advance and serve it at room temperature.

Whipping cream is all about the details. Perfectly whipped cream is cloudlike and light, but if you go just a little too far, it becomes too stiff—on its way to turning into butter. I fold in a bit of crème fraîche or sour cream when serving whipped cream on desserts because I love the tang that it adds, and it guarantees a smooth, dense, and shiny cream. If you are whipping cream to put on a pizza, do not add the crème fraîche; simply continue whipping the cream until it is thick and mousselike.

This mountain of arugula is layered with thinly sliced mushrooms and long thin shards of Piave, a hard cheese similar to but sweeter than Parmigiano—and much less expensive. It’s important to use fresh, firm mushrooms; look for those with closed caps and no blemishes. If you can’t find Piave, Parmigiano is a fine substitute.

Torta della Nonna, or “grandmother’s tart,” is traditionally a two-crusted tart filled with pastry cream that is seen in almost every trattoria in Italy. Dahlia and I knew we wanted to include a version, but luckily, the name gave us a lot of room to be creative. As long as it was reminiscent of something a grandmother would make—meaning homey, simple, and comforting, like this cheesecake version that Dahlia created—I felt we could call it Torta della Nonna. Honey is an obvious pairing with cheese in Italy, so we serve this dessert with three different types of honey on the side: a sweet, delicate, floral honey, such as wildflower honey; a bitter honey (also referred to as savory honey), such as buckwheat or chestnut honey; and honey in the comb. The crust that we use for this torta, Pasta Frolla, is a typical Italian pastry dough used in many classic Italian desserts. In keeping with the Italian spirit, I make it with Italian leavening. You will need an 11-inch flan ring (a straight-sided, bottomless tart ring) for the tart and one that is slightly smaller (we use an 8-inch ring) to cut a circle for the top crust.

The red, green, and white tricolore salad, traditionally composed of radicchio, frisée, and endive, is just one of the many ways that Italians celebrate their flag. I like tricolore salads, but this version, which is tossed in an anchovy-enhanced dressing with lots of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, was my way of sneaking the flavors of a Caesar salad onto the Pizzeria menu without calling it a Caesar. In the rare instance that a Caesar salad is done well, it is one of my favorite salads, but Caesar salad is such a cliché on Italian-American menus—and it’s not even Italian; it was invented in Tijuana—I could never have put it on my menu as such.

These days it’s almost old-fashioned to cook your own beans, even for restaurants. While canned are surprisingly good (I included many canned beans in recipes in my last book, A Twist of the Wrist), homemade beans are so much better. The key to good dried beans is to cook them long enough so that they become creamy. Many restaurants undercook their beans, and frankly I would rather have canned beans than beans that are dry and chalky.

We use this seasoning mix for the Pan-roasted Pork Chops with Olives and Sambuca-braised Fennel (page 241) and the Pork Ribs with Fennel and Apple Cider Vinegar (facing page). It will keep for months, so if you like pork with fennel, make double (or more) of this recipe.

We put so much dried oregano in this vinaigrette that you might think it’s a typo. It’s not. Because the oregano is so prominent, look for sources such as Penzeys that specialize in dried herbs.

One of my favorite daytrips from my house in Italy is to the town of Panzano in Chianti, to visit the world-famous butcher Dario Cecchini. Dario has been covered by every food publication imaginable, and since Bill Buford wrote about him in his memoir, Heat, Dario’s shop has become a mecca for foodies traveling in Italy. To meet the demand of his fans, Dario now has three restaurants that people can visit while they’re there: a steakhouse serving prime cuts, such as bistecca fiorentina, a classic preparation of a T-bone or porterhouse grilled over a wood fire; a hamburger restaurant, Dario Plus; and my favorite of the three, Solo Ciccia. This restaurant, whose name means “only meat,” offers lesser cuts of meats prepared in a variety of ways, many of them cooked long and slow, or stracotto, like this dish. Veal breast isn’t something you’ll find at your average grocery store, so you’ll have to get it from a butcher, and you will probably have to special-order it. Ask the butcher to save the bones he carved the breast from, as you’ll use those to make the stock in which the meat is braised. While you’re at it, have him roll and tie the breast for you, too. Even though this might be out of your ordinary shopping routine, the good news is that you’ll end up with a rich, luxurious veal dish for not a lot of money.

We are not a steakhouse, so I’m always pleasantly surprised when our customers tell us that our rib-eye is their favorite steak in Los Angeles. We start with quality, conventionally raised meat, just like what you will be able to get at a good butcher. The reason our steak is so good is the rub we coat the meat with before grilling it. The rub contains dried porcini, which have a delicious, earthy flavor, and a tiny bit of sugar, which caramelizes on the grill and gives the steak a beautiful crust. More often than not our customers share it among two or three people along with two or three contorni, such as Smashed Potatoes with Rosemary (page 255), Cipolline with Thyme and Sherry Vinegar (page 254), and Sautéed Broccolini with Chiles and Vinegar (page 262) to eat along with it. We order our rib-eyes “frenched,” which means that the meat is cut off the bone so the bone looks almost like a handle, which makes for a more unusual, elegant presentation. If you have a butcher who will do that for you, great. If not, it won’t make a bit of difference in the flavor. Unlike a French preparation, served with a heavy Béarnaise sauce, ours is served with Italy’s two best condiments: quality extra-virgin olive oil and aged balsamico condimento.

In the last few years, it seems like there have been two requirements to opening a successful restaurant in Los Angeles. You have to offer a selection of decent wines by the glass, and you have to offer braised short ribs. You see short ribs served on the bone and off the bone; cooked with Indian spices, Asian spices, and Latin American spices; and served over mashed potatoes, polenta, and who knows what else. I don’t roll my eyes when I see them on a menu because I know how good they can be. Once they’re cooked, they’re good for a few days, so they’re convenient for the home cook. Braise them today; reheat them tomorrow. In the Italian spirit of not wasting any bit of food, shred the leftover meat to make Francobolli di Brasato al Pomodoro (page 177).

One of the unique and really great things about duck is that if you do everything right, you are able to get the skin deliciously crisp, as it is here. We borrowed the idea for cooking the duck from a similar dish that is served at Mario and Joe’s Lupa Osteria Romana, in New York. We call it “al mattone,” a term that refers to something (generally chicken) cooked under a brick, because it has the same crisp skin as if you had put pressure on the bird when you cooked it. We serve the duck with either a side of sautéed corn or Brussels sprout leaves. Even though we gave you recipes for both, the idea is that you make only the one that is in season. The duck also comes with a ramekin of pear mostarda, a spicy Italian condiment whose sharp spiciness cuts through the richness of the duck and really makes the dish. To confit the ducks, buy rendered duck fat from the same source as you buy your ducks. We serve half a duck to each guest, but it’s a dish that people often order, along with two or three contorni, to share. Served family style with the corn or Brussels sprouts, and two or three additional contorni, four duck halves could feed six or eight people. After cooking the ducks we like to rest them in the fat they were cooked in for at least 24 hours. Plan accordingly.

One of the principles of Italian cooking—and maybe this is true of all of European kitchens—is not to be wasteful. Italian cooks find a use for every edible component of each animal or vegetable they cook. In the Italian spirit, I use all parts of the celery in this dish. I slice the celery ribs for the salad, and I use the leaves, so often discarded, both in a salad the cheese is served on and to make a celery-leaf pesto that gets spooned onto the cheese. The result is a bright, flavorful, and textural salad that is equally pretty and unexpected. We peel celery using a vegetable peeler anytime we are serving it raw; it takes only a few seconds and the celery is so much more tender with the fibrous strings removed. The pesto recipe makes 3/4 cup, which is more than you will need for this recipe, but it’s difficult to make pesto in a smaller quantity. Spoon the leftovers over grilled chicken, fish, or vegetables; use in place of basil pesto to make a tomato and mozzarella salad; or simply double the salad and the stracciatella in this recipe to make eight salads. Since stracciatella is hard to find, feel free to substitute burrata in this dish. I normally like to use only the pale green leaves from the celery hearts, but since this dish requires so many celery leaves, I call for you to use the darker green leaves for the pesto, reserving the light green leaves for the salad. If you were inclined to buy even more celery, then use the light green leaves for both parts of this recipe—and use the excess celery ribs as inspiration to make Basic Chicken Stock (page 27), Soffritto (page 28), Lentils Castellucciano (page 264), or any of our other recipes that begin with sautéed diced celery.

Pain de mie is a French-style bread shaped like a traditional, square-edged slicing loaf similar to a Pullman loaf. Mie means “crumb” and is a breadbaker’s term that refers to the inside of bread—that which isn’t the crust. This bread is so named because, baked in a loaf pan, it doesn’t have a crust. Pain de mie contains a touch of sugar and butter so it makes for the most flavorful bread crumbs. If you can’t get pain de mie, substitute brioche, which is even more buttery.

I’ve been making a version of this condiment for as long as I can remember. Currants and pine nuts are a traditional Sicilian combination, so anytime I use this I feel like I am making a Sicilian dish.

This is a simple and foolproof recipe for the creamiest, lemoniest curd you’ll ever taste. It makes more than you will need for the Bombolini with Berry Marmellata, Lemon Curd, and Vanilla Gelato (page 293), but you can use the leftovers in countless ways: serve it atop Greek Yogurt Gelato (page 313) or as a dessert sauce for Cannoli di Gelato (page 287), or do the English thing and spoon it onto warm scones.

It takes a lot of olive oil to make these artichokes, but that’s what gives them their buttery texture and delicious flavor. The good news is that you can use the oil a second time for the same purpose. For this recipe you want to use baby artichokes. If you use the bigger artichokes that are commonly found in grocery stores, you’ll have to remove the choke before braising the artichokes and the final result won’t be quite as pretty. If you like sweetbreads, make a double batch and use half for the Veal Sweetbreads Piccata with Artichokes (page 239), one of the stars on our secondo menu.

For these beautiful, sweet tomatoes on the vine, we start with Sunsweet tomatoes, which you can find sold in plastic boxes in grocery stores. I love the delicate, organic look of the small tomatoes dangling from the long stems. This recipe makes more than you will need for four servings of the Mozza Caprese. We did this to tailor the recipe to the size of the boxes the tomatoes are sold in and because you are sure to lose some tomatoes to anyone who walks by after they are out of the oven. If you can find tomatoes on the vine at your local famers’ market, even better.