Dairy Free

This simple quince preserve is a specialty in many Italian regions. It seems to have its origins in the fourteenth century, when some of the most noted were from Reggio Emilia and Genova. The translucent, pastel fruit in a jellied syrup is a delightful accompaniment to all sorts of sweet and savory dishes. If you have a large batch of fresh quince, just multiply this recipe and make a big pan of cotognata. It will keep for a month refrigerated. Pack it in little jelly jars and give as a gift: cotognata is a colorful and delicious way to introduce others to the pleasures of quince!

If you haven’t cooked quince before, this is a good way to start. The sauce is tangy, not overly sweet, and because the fruit pieces tend to stay intact when cooked, you will enjoy the distinctive taste and texture. Though it is not as sweet as cotognata (the quince sauce that follows), you can enjoy it in many of the same ways, such as spooned onto buttered toast or stirred into a bowl of yogurt, for a tangy snack.

Salmoriglio, a traditional sauce for seafood, is nothing more than a dressing of olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, salt, peperoncino, and fresh parsley. There’s nothing to it—except remembering to make it ahead, so the garlic and pepper infuse the oil.

This is a great sauce for poached or grilled fish or poultry. It is customary in Italy to serve a poached or boiled meat with two or more sauces. Salsa Verde (page 362) and this sauce make a delightful pair. And it’s a snap to make right out of the pantry. It’s got a brilliant color and surprisingly complex flavor for such a simple preparation: sweet, mildly acidic, and piquant—or as hot as you want, if you add more peperoncino or Tabasco. Fresh eggplant, poached with the onions, gives the sauce even more depth (see box that follows).

This is a classic cold sauce for boiled meats, poultry, and fish, but I find wonderful new uses for it all the time.

Beef shoulder, usually called the chuck, is the source of many flavorful cuts of meat. One of my favorites for braising is the compact boneless chuck roast, taken from underneath the shoulder blade. There’s so much connective tissue and fat in the meat that long, moist cooking will produce soft, delicious meat, whatever you put in the pot. This braise, however, is a special one, inspired by my connection to and love for Venice and its special place in culinary history—La Serenissima, as the state of Venice was called, was a center for the spice trade and the silk route through the Middle East to the Orient for over 600 years. The use of exotic, imported spices in cooking signaled a well-to-do household with a rich kitchen. I get excited just assembling the spices and flavorings (including coffee and cocoa) for this. And when the exotic perfume arises from the bubbling wine that fills the pot, I hate to leave the kitchen, even though there’s almost no work to do once the beef begins its 3 hours of braising.

Pork shoulder is delicious braised as well as roasted. Salsa Genovese provides a wonderful sauce as well as a large amount of meat—indeed, this traditional Neapolitan Sunday dish gives you two options, for two different meals. In the custom of “Sunday sauces,” the freshly cooked pork and its braising sauce are served separately the first time: the sauce with the meat extracted is tossed with pasta for a first course, and the meat is sliced and served as a main course. (In Italian and Italian-American homes, these might be different courses or on the table at the same time.) Whatever sauce and meat are left from the first feast are then combined into a meaty sauce to dress pasta another day. A 5-pound pork shoulder cooked, in my recipe, with 5 pounds of chopped onions will give you plenty of meat and sauce to enjoy all these ways. Braise a bigger shoulder butt for even more leftovers—just be sure to buy plenty of onions: a 7-pound pork roast gets 7 pounds of onions!

Pork shoulders (also called butts or Boston butts) are terrific roasts, in my opinion, more delicious than pork loin and definitely less expensive. With a nice layer of fat on top, a good proportion of fat through the muscle, and lots of connective tissue, the roasted meat has wonderful flavor and soft, moist texture. It’s easy to roast—you don’t need to erect a foil tent for it—and the shoulder-blade bone, which adds flavor and speeds roasting, is simple to remove when you’re serving the meat. (It is also easy to braise, as you will find in the following recipe for Salsa Genovese). Shoulder roasts range from 4 to 8 pounds, bone-in, or larger. This procedure will work for any-size roast, though the vegetable and seasoning amounts are for a 5-to-7-pound shoulder, the size you’ll usually find in the butcher’s case. To feed a big crowd, ask the butcher to cut a larger shoulder for you, or cook two smaller roasts in one very big roasting pan. Be sure to increase the vegetables, seasonings, and cooking liquids proportionally with your meat. Some of the other choices you have with this easy roast: should you mash all the roasting-pan vegetables into the sauce—the simplest method—or cut and caramelize them to serve as a side dish? Or a bit of each? (See page 344 for more information.) It’s up to you. Do you want to glaze the roast? I’ve got a good maple syrup glaze to share—see recipe that follows.

You’ll need lamb shoulder chops again for this great dinner dish, but, unlike the thin chops for skillet cooking, the right ones for roasting won’t be in the meat case. Don’t just pick up a package of thick-looking chops: ask the butcher to cut lamb shoulder chops expressly for you, each one 2 1/2 inches thick (or as close to that as possible). If he or she looks surprised, it’s because she’s never cut them that thick before. The chop size is unusual, but the meat is exactly the same as everyday thin chops—so make sure she gives you the same price! Thick chops are treated here like roasts, following my covered/uncovered roasting procedure. To shorten the roasting time, I divide each chop into two pieces. Still, the meat needs 90 minutes or more in the oven, typical of the long cooking all shoulder cuts need, to melt the connective tissue and fat, to extract the flavor of bones, and to soften the meat fibers. Bigger pork and beef shoulders will take twice as long as these lamb chops.

Here’s an uncommon preparation for one of the most common and popular cuts of meat in the market: thin-cut lamb shoulder chops. They’re inexpensive, wide, and meaty. Barely 1/2 inch thick, they look like they’ll cook in a minute, perfect for fast family suppers. But shoulder chops also have lots of cartilage and gristle, and usually two sets of bones, which call for slow cooking (and the meat is tougher than it looks). Though it is a thin chop, it will take about 20 minutes to cook. Get out the big skillet to caramelize the meat and flavoring agents, and then bring everything together in a superb sauce. With surprising ingredients, this is a good recipe to add to your growing repertoire of aglio e olio base sauces. Also, as the sauce reduces, it actually braises the chops for a few minutes, which tenderizes the meat a bit, although it will still be chewy (which I love). What is surprising about the sauce? In addition to my usual aglio, olio, e peperoncino, I drop a couple of chopped anchovy fillets into the pan, where they quickly disintegrate. As part of the sauce, their flavor has a subtle presence but a remarkable impact: taste a bit of lamb by itself, then a morsel with sauce, and you’ll see. Here is delicious evidence that the anchovy is a potent source of umami—the amino acid that makes other foods taste better. You can omit the anchovies entirely, but I hope you’ll give this food synergy a try: if you’re doubtful, use just one fillet of anchovy. We all need to be adventurous!

Duck has in most cases been something you eat in a restaurant. I love duck, and I love serving it at home to family and guests. I hope that this two-step method of cooking cut-up duck pieces in a big skillet or casserole will make you comfortable with cooking duck at home. First you fry the duck by itself for about an hour, slowly; the skillet takes all the fat out of the bird and melts it into a frying medium which leaves the skin golden and crispy and the meat moist, flavorful, and, amazingly, not at all greasy. In the second stage, you build a small sauce and infuse the duck with its savor. I prefer cooking just the duck legs here, as I do for the guazzetto on page 154, as they require minimal trimming and the meat stays moist through the long cooking. If your supermarket doesn’t have duck legs, ask if they can order them; call a few specialty butchers or even a local restaurant provisioner if necessary. Duck legs are worth looking for, because they’re not only convenient and delicious but often less expensive than whole duck. If a whole duck is all you can get, though, it will work fine in this recipe. See below for a simple cutting-up procedure.

Please try this recipe. Nothing would make me happier than to see more dedicated home cooks in this country cooking rabbit. And for those of you just starting to cook, you really should make use of this delicious and healthful meat. It’s always been an important food on our family table. When I was a child, in our town of Busoler, every family had a pen of rabbits—including my namesake Aunt Lidia, my mother’s sister—and even as I gathered grass to feed them and played with them, I understood how important it was to nourish them, so they would nourish us. Today, though, while rabbit dishes are popular in my restaurants, especially as a pasta condiment, I notice that customers still regard rabbit as a fancy and different food, especially the saddle (the loin section) of rabbit. The truth is, rabbit is easy to cook and is as versatile and tasty as chicken. Here, then, is a typical rabbit dish from my kitchen, which I still prepare often for family dinners. I always buy whole rabbits and cut them up myself, as I demonstrate in the photos alongside. Like poultry, rabbit is easy to divide. Let the joints show you where to cut off the meaty leg pieces. The back pieces are easy to chop with a sturdy chef’s knife or a small cleaver. If you prefer, though, ask your butcher to cut up the rabbit into eight or ten pieces for you. I am sure you’ll love this cacciatore (hunter’s-style) rabbit. During the first 40 minutes, the cooking is purposely slow and relaxed, as the meat gradually caramelizes with herbs, fresh peppers, and other vegetables and seasonings. Add these as you prepare them—you don’t need to rush. Once you’ve developed many layers of flavor, you pour in some broth, cover the pan, and let the rabbit braise for another 20 minutes.

In my family, favorite dishes are always being altered according to what is available and what is best—especially when I’m cooking. Here’s a perfect example: chicken and potatoes, fried together in a big skillet so they’re crisp and moist at the same time, is my mother’s specialty. Growing up, my brother and I demanded it every week; our kids, Tanya and Joe and Eric, Paul and Estelle, clamored for it too. And now the next generation of little ones are asking their great-grandmother to make chicken and potatoes for them. When I am at the stove—and though I follow my mother’s basic procedures—I can’t resist playing around. Some days I add sausage to Grandma’s recipe, or capers or olives; I might douse the chicken with a splash of vinegar; sometimes I cut up a whole chicken, other times I’ll split little poussins or Cornish hens. If I’m in a hurry, I quickly cook small pieces of chicken breast with the potatoes. (You can see what experiments have worked well if you look through my previous books.) This recipe gives you Erminia’s classic formula—chicken, small potatoes, a bit of onion, and fresh rosemary—with two of my latest twists: pickled cherry peppers and bacon strips, in bite-sized rolls. Cherry peppers are plump golf-ball–sized antipasto peppers in vinegar that you’ll find in jars on the pickle shelves of the supermarket. They come in sweet and hot varieties—and the latter are explosive, if you take just a bite. But when they’re seeded, sliced, and added sparingly to the chicken, they imbue the dish with a mellow heat that I love. If you and your family are hot heads, cut up two or more peppers; otherwise slice only one, or use the sweet cherry peppers and see how you like that. My latest spin on our chicken-and-potato tradition is one everybody loves, especially the kids: we roll bacon slices into little bundles, pin each one closed with a toothpick, and caramelize them along with the chicken. The bacon fat slowly renders and lends the meat a layer of flavor that’s picked up by the potatoes and onions too. By the end of cooking, the rolls have turned into crisp morsels that are a treat to eat with the juicy chicken and tender potatoes. (But be sure to remove all the toothpicks!)

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.

This beautiful brodetto is brimful of colors, tastes, and textures, and extends the flavor of lobster to bowls of polenta or pasta. Lobster and corn cooked together in a brodetto is not traditionally found in Italy. I discovered this combination of flavors when I was traveling through Maine and other parts of the Northeastern coast of the United States, and I liked it so much that I took the liberty to Italianize the duo. The preparation follows the basic steps of all red brodetti: First the floured lobster pieces are fried to seal the flesh and caramelize it. Then they’re put back in the skillet with aromatics, tomato, and seasonings to create the brodetto, and the addition of corn adds sweetness and texture. Most people eat only the tails and the claws of lobsters, but don’t you disregard the heads and tiny legs—they are the sweetest parts. After having enjoyed the polenta and the sought-after parts of the lobster, set yourself up with a wet towel and a clean plate, and begin to nibble and suck on those little legs, biting into them now and then to squeeze out the meat. Then pull the head piece up close and pull the inside part from the shell, lick the shell, and set it down. Slowly begin to pry open the chest chambers, and with an oyster fork pry out morsels of some of the sweetest lobster meat. At our house it is the heads of the lobsters that are rationed, not the tails.

This is one of those almost miracle dishes: it is ready in 10 minutes, it is quite inexpensive, it is full of flavor and texture and very gratifying, and all of my grandchildren love it. The brininess of the sea will come forth with the underlying garlic, lemon, and olive oil, the flavors all tied together by bread crumbs, then captured in the opening shells of this sweet mollusk. But one thing is required of you in order for this miracle to happen. The mussels you buy must be absolutely the freshest; otherwise, turn the page and go to another recipe. To enjoy this dish best, you must serve it piping hot in hot bowls, because the shells cool quickly. Grilled country bread and spoons will help scoop up every last drop. If you have some left over, remove mussel meat from the shells and return it to the sauce to make a great condiment for a plate of pasta the next day.

Brodo means “soup” in Italian, and brodetti are savory, soupy preparations that usually refer to fish. A brodetto is uncomplicated, quick, and very delicious— a preparation that you can use for many kinds of seafood. For this recipe I’ve chosen skate, an ocean fish that some of you may not be familiar with. It is immensely popular in Europe and one of my lifelong favorites. Fortunately, it is now widely available here, reasonably priced, and, when fresh, as sweet and luscious as lobster. It is particularly well suited for a brodetto, having naturally gelatinous flesh and bones, which enhance the richness and viscosity of the sauce. If you can, buy skate with the center cartilage, which is how I like it; see box on skate, below.

You have certainly played around with fresh basil, particularly with pesto. Here the flavor is more subtle in its cooked form.