Basil

The clams in this dish are steamed with tomatoes, fresh basil, and red pepper flakes. The flavors are simple and delicious. Dinner in under an hour never tasted so good.

This is the old-school lasagna that you find in the Italian restaurants in Brooklyn. Fuggedaboudit! You can assemble the lasagna ahead of time … and it’s great for leftovers.

If you have never experimented with Thai ingredients before, try this recipe—the flavors are mental. Lemongrass, coconut milk, basil, lime: They all hit the palate in perfect harmony. If you love Thai food, this is a great dish to start playing around with—and it’s very easy. The floral aroma of green curry simmering on the stove is hypnotic. Kaffir lime leaves are crucial to this dish and are worth the trip to your local Asian market. Serve with Perfect Steamed Jasmine Rice (page 240).

This salad is wonderful served warm or at room temperature with French bread and a green salad.

For pizza lovers, here are eight varieties to choose from. The basic dough makes two pizzas. The dough is easy to mix in the food processor.

Oven-drying concentrates the flavor and aroma of tomatoes, something I like to do especially in the winter, when fresh tomatoes are not always flavorful. In the convection oven, the tomatoes dry in about half the time of a conventional oven. You can store the dried tomatoes in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. Otherwise, wrap them well and freeze them for later use. I love them served this way: Simply topped with fresh mozzarella and seasonings on a crisp crouton. They’re great in salads, or as an accompaniment for oven-grilled chicken breasts.

The difference between marinara sauce and tomato sauce is this: Marinara is a quick sauce, seasoned only with garlic, pepper, and, if you like, basil or oregano. The pieces of tomato are left chunky, and the texture of the finished sauce is fairly loose. Tomato sauce, on the other hand, is a more complex affair, starting with puréed tomatoes and seasoned with onion, carrot, celery, and bay leaf, and left to simmer until thickened and rich in flavor. Make this sauce with fresh tomatoes only when the juiciest, most flavorful ripe tomatoes are available. (Increase the amount of olive oil a little if you make the sauce with fresh tomatoes.) Otherwise, canned plum tomatoes make a delicious marinara sauce.

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.

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.

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.

In the dialect of the Lucani (as natives of Basilicata are known) maritare means “to wed,” and I have always thought that this wonderful soup was so named because it was customarily served at wedding celebrations. Recently, however, while doing some research, I came upon another explanation of why it is called maritata—because it weds vegetables (in the soup base) with meat (in the polpette), and with this added protein it becomes a complete and balanced one-course meal. I like both interpretations of the name and believe they’re compatible. Certainly a young couple, on the brink of their first night as newlyweds, can use this fortifying nourishment! There are many ways to prepare and serve a soup with multiple elements like this one, and you can of course play around with the recipe here. One variation is to fry the meatballs rather than poaching them. Though it takes a bit more work, it does give another layer of flavor (see my recipe for Meatballs in Broth in the Umbria chapter, page 196, for instructions on frying little meatballs for soup). Another option is to add cubes of provola to the soup just before serving. If you can get a good-quality Italian provola (mild provolone), this embellishment is superb. I’ve included instructions for this step at the end of the main recipe.

This distinctively flavored pesto is a superb dressing for maccheroni alla chitarra (page 236), spaghetti, or linguine, or a short dry pasta such as gemelli, lumache, or rigatoni. It’s a great condiment, too: put a spoonful on fish or chicken hot off the grill for a real treat. Make extra pesto when basil and parsley are plentiful, in summer, and freeze it in small containers to use through the winter.

This is a fresh and extremely flavorful preparation for strangozzi. The dressing has two components, tender cooked Swiss chard and an uncooked pesto of fresh basil and mint leaves and toasted almonds. (Other leafy greens, such as spinach, chicory, and arugula, could be used, and walnuts could replace the almonds, but the recipe here is true to the region.) It is best to prepare the greens and pesto shortly before you cook and serve the pasta, but if you follow the recipe steps, the dish is actually quite quick-cooking and simple. It is only the multitude of tastes and textures that are complex and tantalizing!

Like pasta itself, tomato sauces for pasta come in endless varieties. This one gets a depth of flavor from vegetable pestata and good bacon. The recipe makes enough sauce to dress two batches of pasta. Use half on fresh strangozzi, and pack up half for a future meal: it will keep in the freezer for 4 to 6 weeks and will be wonderful on any pasta you choose.

When I say the word “pesto” to people in America (or anywhere outside Italy), I know they are thinking of pesto alla Genovese, with its lush green color and intense perfume of fresh basil leaves. Indeed, though there are countless fresh sauces that are also termed “pesto” in Italian cuisine (see box, page 105), it seems that pasta with basil-and-pine-nut pesto is so well known that it might as well be the national Italian dish! Traditionally, long, flat trenette or shorter twisted trofie is the pasta used here, though even spaghetti is great with the pesto. For the most authentic flavor, use a sweet, small-leaved Genovese basil for the pesto—perhaps you can find it at a farmers’ market in summer, or grow it yourself. Large basil will be delicious, too. Of course, use the best extra-virgin olive oil available, in the pesto and on the pasta, preferably pressed from the marvelous taggiasca olives of Liguria.

This soup exemplifies the Ligurian love of vegetables, which is one of the things I love most about that cuisine. It demonstrates that with vegetables alone—there’s no meat or meat stock in it—you can cook immensely flavorful and satisfying dishes. This is my re-creation of the heavenly vegetable soup served by my cousin Lidia Bosazzi when my parents took my brother Franco and me to Genova before we immigrated to America. With more kinds of vegetables than I could count—and that aroma of pungent garlic, which I have never forgotten—this is one of the most satisfying soups I know. More than most dishes, soups accommodate variation and improvisation, and, as usual, I encourage you to experiment with this recipe. You don’t need every vegetable in the exact amount listed for the zuppa—use what you have or like. And even the all-important garlic can be reduced (or increased) according to your family’s taste. A substitution or addition that I recommend, in fact, is to use all the aromatic onion-family members that come in springtime—fresh spring onions and spring garlic with green shoots, scallions, baby leeks. They make every soup better. At home I make this in large quantities, and that is how I share it with you. With all the work of washing and chopping vegetables, I like to have plenty of soup to enjoy right away and a couple of quarts in the freezer for a future meal. You can cut the recipe in half if you like, but I believe you go through your days feeling better when there’s a delicious soup stored at home, ready to be enjoyed and to sustain you.

The traditional Ligurian bread salad condiggion was the highlight of the meal we had in the Cinque Terre a few years ago (as I mentioned in the introduction to this chapter). With many textures from crunchy vegetables, vinegar-soaked bread, and tangy greens, and layers of flavor in the basil and olive-oil dressing—and a shower of dried tuna roe, bottarga, providing a touch of salt and sea—this has become one of my favorite summer salads. It is exceptionally flavorful and refreshing, and a great accompaniment to the grilled meat and fish that I prepare in summer. This salad is also open to variation, so use your favorite greens, vegetables, and even bread. I find that curly chicory, green and bitter, makes the best salad, but you can play with other seasonal greens you find in the market. And if you have some day-old whole-wheat or multigrain bread, that could be delicious here, too. Just make sure it is dry enough to be revitalized by the vinegar and dressing (if too fresh, it will crumble into mush at the bottom of the bowl). In Liguria, where bottarga is a common flavoring element, it is essential to the salad. If you have some, by all means use it (and keep it wrapped well and frozen for long storage). Otherwise, chopped anchovies are a good final addition to the salad, if you yearn for that salty fish flavor, as I do.

A platter of baked stuffed vegetables is one of the everyday delights of the Genovese table, and I always sample a seasonal assortment when I visit the city. The array is never exactly the same, and this recipe is a guideline that you can (and should) vary according to your tastes and what’s available. I give you one delicious and easy bread stuffing, along with procedures for preparing and baking a few of the most typical vegetables used in Genova—bell peppers, mushrooms, sweet onions, tomatoes, and zucchini. Many others can be substituted and will be delicious with this stuffing, including beets, fennel, squash, and even carrots. Of course, you don’t have to have every one of the vegetables I recommend. Stuff just a couple of different veggies, or just pick one, such as stuffed and baked big mushrooms, if that’s what you like. Like other Ligurian vegetable dishes, ripieni all’Antica can be served piping hot, warm, or at room temperature; presented on individual plates, or family-style on large platters. They make a great appetizer, a side dish for grilled steak, lamb, or chicken, or a vegetarian main course. And when I have a few leftover vegetables, I heat them up in the morning and top them with a fried or poached egg, for a special breakfast.

This pesto if very simple, and its mild, herbaceous flavor makes it the ideal companion for just about any of the meatballs. While many pesto recipes call for pine nuts, we prefer the flavor (and lower price) of walnuts. Try finely chopping them and adding them right at the end for a nice, crunchy texture. We also love this as a healthy party dip, especially because it has no raw garlic—your guests will thank you too! Just cut up some carrots, cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, and celery and you're ready to go. You can swap arugula for spinach if you prefer. Pesto freezes well and will keep for up to three months in the freezer.