Dairy Free

Raw spinach salad can be delicious, but, in my opinion, a brief cooking—really just a dip in boiling water—brings out the vegetable’s best qualities. Use really young, tender spinach for this salad. It’s easy to find baby spinach in plastic packs these days, but whenever you can—especially in springtime—buy clusters of tender leaves with tiny reddish stems joined at the roots, as they were plucked from the earth. Trim only the hairy tip of the roots, and cook the leaves and stems still together. Make sure you wash them several times, since dirt lodges between the stems.

Carrots are an unappreciated standby. We tend to use them for everything but rarely highlight them. This dish brings out their sparkle.

You may have heard me describe the extraordinary qualities of an authentic aceto balsamico tradizionale—how it takes 20 years of careful concentration to develop its intense flavors; how a few drops make a dish taste magical; and how the price of a tiny bottle has caused many unsuspecting tourists to faint! Here, though, is a more reasonable way to bring some of the intensity and complexity of the greatest balsamic vinegar to everyday dishes: reduce a bottle of the affordable commerciale grade of balsamic to a thick syrup. Don’t look for the cheapest “balsamic” on supermarket shelves; look for a vinegar from a reputable company, produced in Italy—and expect to pay $8 to $10 for a pint. I use this condiment on a range of dishes (and in numerous recipes throughout the book), as a thick sauce to drizzle on meats and vegetables and, in a somewhat thinner state, as a glaze on roasts. As you’ll see in the recipe, the vinegar reduces with added honey and bay leaf, but you can give it other flavor notes. I vary these with the dish I intend to dress: for vegetables I add whole cloves; for meat and poultry I add rosemary; for fish I add thyme. The basic formula will provide you with syrup for drizzling on a half-dozen dishes, maybe more. It will keep forever in the refrigerator, but I’m sure you’ll use it up quicker than that!

This might be considered a salad, but it is a wonderful stuzzichino (something to nibble on). Slow roasting intensifies the flavor of olives and gives them an unusual yet delightful crunch. Tossed with vinegar-poached pearl onions, they make a lively and beautiful salad-condiment. Serve this as an antipasto with cured meats and cheeses, or with grilled meats and fish. It is also a great garnish for sandwiches or with slices of grilled bread. All you need is a plate, a fork, and a glass of good red wine.

This is a great spring salad with two long, lovely green vegetables that have a real affinity for each other (try the Asparagus, Green Pea, and Scallion Sauce for pasta in chapter 3). It is delicious as an antipasto or a first course, or as a side dish to grilled meat and fish. You can serve this salad chilled, but I like it at room temperature. If you haven’t poached scallions before, be sure to note how nicely it brings out the flavors in a mellow way. And here’s a thrifty cooking tip: scallion trimmings are some of the most useful scraps in the kitchen. A handful of leaves and the root ends can make an instant broth, as a substitute for stock—see my recipe for Simple Vegetable Broth, page 288.

I have literally grown up on zucchini prepared in this simple way—sliced into thin strips, dipped in egg, and fried. It was one of my favorite vegetables when I was little, and quite often my mother made our lunch sandwiches with the strips too, for us to take to school. (It’s still a great sandwich; see page 23.) Crispy and sweet and soft at the same time, the strips are delicious warm or at room temperature, with just a sprinkle of salt—as I serve them to my grand-kids—or dressed with capers and lemon juice, for adult tastes. Rolled up and secured with toothpicks, these are a great finger food for a party—a preferred morsel for martini drinkers, I’ve noticed. They’re also a delicious side dish for grilled meats and fish. At summer suppers, I put a platter of roll-ups in the middle of the table, where everybody at any time can spear one with a fork.

Though it cooks for only 15 minutes, this tomato sauce gets loads of flavor from both the tonno and the olio of your marinated tuna. But you don’t want just to boil the tuna and tomatoes together: it is essential to add the fish, the oil, and all the other ingredients to the big skillet at the right time. The technique of skillet sauces, and how to finish pasta and sauce together, is explained in depth on pages 89 to 93. For this chunky sauce, I recommend a short dried pasta with lots of nooks and crannies, like cavatelli or campanelle or conchiglie. These will catch some tuna for you with each bite, so you don’t end up with all the tuna swimming in the bottom of your bowl.

This is a special salad worthy of your homemade tonno sott’olio. You blanch the tomatoes and scallions, and briefly sauté the red onion to mellow pungency and soften textures. The salad needs a good hour of marinating to let the sweet and savory flavors mingle. Incidentally, leftovers make great juicy sandwiches. I recommend white balsamic vinegar here, to wilt the red onion and dress the salad. White balsamic is not a traditional product, but it comes from Modena, like any decent balsamic, and it has a clean taste and a light color that don’t muddy dishes the way dark balsamic can. If you can’t find it, use regular wine vinegar. You may also use top-quality canned tuna in this salad, but drain and discard the packing oil and substitute fresh extra-virgin olive oil in the dressing and sauté.

Canned tuna is a staple in my kitchen—in one of the cupboards, there’s always a tall stack of colorful cans of excellent Italian tonno in olio di oliva. Tuna packed in olive oil is the only kind to have, in my opinion, and I make it the basis for many meals, sometimes some pasta for lunch or dinner, or a salad for myself, my mother, and Gianni, or sandwiches for the kids. But when I want the best marinated tuna, I make my own marinated tonno sott’olio: I poach thick tuna steaks gently for 15 minutes, let them cool and dry for a couple of hours, then pack the fish in jars in big chunks, submerged in extra-virgin olive oil. It is truly simple, as this recipe will show you. If you love tuna, then I know you will make this recipe your own. Just a chunk of it on a plate, with nothing more than a drizzle of the marinating oil, makes a great antipasto. Or dress it up with onion or tomatoes, as I suggest for Marinated Mackerel (pages 4 and 5). Use it in the colorful salad I give you here with cherry tomatoes, red onion, and scallions, or see how tonno sott’olio takes your own favorite tuna salad to a new level. And don’t miss the opportunity to make the outstanding pasta sauce with tomatoes on page 14. With this recipe you’ll have about 2 pounds of tuna, in jars or crocks of oil. Stored in the refrigerator, it will keep for a month or more, giving you plenty of time to try it in several different dishes. But I guarantee you’ll want more: to make larger batches, just multiply the ingredients and follow the basic procedures.

Mackerel is a wonderful fish to buy when it is in season. It is inexpensive and intensely flavored, and when it is preserved in oil this way, you can keep it as long as a month; you’ll have in your fridge a delicious treasure to draw on for a quick appetizer or lunch dish. The most common size is 11 to 12 inches, and the filleting and boning of these small fish can be quite a job. So, unless you are feeling ambitious, get your fishmonger to do the work.

Legend has it that this dessert was born in 1600, in the monastery of Monte Sant’ Angelo, where there is a sanctuary dedicated to the Archangel Michael. As the story goes, while the nuns in the monastery were preparing the dough for the ostie—the Communion wafer or host—some of the almonds fell in the hot honey. Not having anything close by to pick them out, they used the hosts they were making, and so the dessert was born. In this simple dessert, two wafers are filled like a sandwich with almonds caramelized in honey. It is a treat for the faithful on the special holiday of St. Michael the Archangel on September 29—even nonbelievers will love them.

Here’s another of my delicious discoveries at Le Lampare, in Trani. Farro is again paired with seafood, the simply cooked grain tossed and dressed, like pasta, with a lively sauce of cured tuna, tomatoes, and capers. We can’t match the tuna used at Le Lampare—theirs was expertly house-cured from the flavorful and expensive ventresca (belly flap) of the fish—but with this recipe you can make a version that is truly delicious in its own right, using good-quality Italian canned tuna (packed in olive oil, of course). It is a great summer dish, as a main course or an appetizer.

As much as Puglia is about the land, it is also flanked by water: the Adriatic on one side and the Ionian Sea on the gulf side. Hence, one finds a big tradition of seafood as one travels down to the tip of the heel. In the quaint seaside city of Trani, along the Adriatic shoreline, is a delightful restaurant called Le Lampare. There I was introduced to farro con legumi e cozze, a beautiful stew of ceci and cannellini beans cooked with farro, one of my favorite grains, tossed before serving with savory mussels and their juices.

Cipollotto di Acquaviva, small sweet onions baked with a sprinkle of bread crumbs, is another one of those simple gems from the Antichi Sapori restaurant. Acquaviva is a nearby town famed for the sweetness of its onions. Chef Pietro Zito prepared them for me this way, and they were as sweet as apples. To make these at home, buy any of the sweet onions in the market—such as Vidalia, Walla Walla, or Maui—preferably small, flattish ones, about 2 ounces each. Serve three or four baked onion halves as an appetizer. You can also season and roast the onions on a slow grill, covered—they make a great accompaniment to grilled fish and meat. And very small onions baked Acquaviva style are a wonderful bite-sized hors d’oeuvre.

Antichi Sapori, a family-run restaurant in Montegrosso, a few kilometers south of Andria, is where I had some of the best local products and traditional dishes. Pietro Zito, the chef and owner, is tied to the land and works with local seasonal products. One of several memorable dishes I enjoyed there was ceci e tria, this dense soup of chickpeas with the textural interplay of cooked and fried pasta. It’s a flavorful simple dish, very rustic and yet mellow.

It is hard to reproduce an authentic version of a typical Pugliese bread without the special starter and the wood-burning oven for baking. But, as you will find with the following recipe, this memorable focaccia is one that you can bake successfully at home. The topping of marinated onions and cherry tomatoes is simple and delicious. With this dough as a base, however, you can be creative and make a focaccia with mushrooms, leeks, sausages, and cheese in any combination. Keep in mind, though, that a simple topping, with a few distinct and harmonious flavors, is always more successful than a topping that tries to incorporate too many things. Be sure to season your topping ingredients and, where appropriate, cook and cool them before assembling the focaccia, so they don’t just dry out in the oven.