European

Fresh porcini make the base of an incredible pasta sauce but cost at least twenty dollars a pound, if and when you can find them. Portobellos, which are cultivated, not wild, are sold at every supermarket every day at prices ranging from four to ten dollars a pound, and they’re consistent in quality. And if you cook them slowly in oil, adding a few reconstituted dried porcini as they cook—a technique popularized by Marcella Hazan—the results are wonderful. This mushroom topping is also great with nice, soft polenta (page 529).

There are several types of pasta sauce based on walnuts in northern Italy, including the one on page 550; this is among my favorites. It also happens to be the easiest. If you like, you could throw in a tablespoon of capers, too.

This is a simple preparation that can serve as a side dish or main course (add some cooked sausage if you like) and can be made with any dark green, from spinach to collards to turnip or mustard greens. It needs no cheese.

Cabbage, when it begins to break down, becomes quite creamy, and that’s what makes this dish somewhat unusual. This will be stronger tasting if you use plenty of black and red pepper, olive oil, and pecorino or quite mild if you start with butter, reducing the black pepper, eliminating the red, and finishing with pecorino. You can also make it far more substantial; see the variation.

The sweet, familiar combination of pine nuts and currants offsets the mild anise bitterness of fresh fennel here. Omit the pasta from this Sicilian sauce and you’ll have a good vegetable dish. If you can find the herb fennel (those living in southern California can find it wild, and many gardeners use it as an ornamental), use a few of the feathery parts of its stalks in place of the tops of the bulb. If you cannot, add the fennel seeds for stronger flavor.

True pansotti are stuffed, with a mixture like this, but I rarely feel like filling pasta, and this way it makes a very fast meal and tastes just as good (it tastes even better with fresh pasta, page 541). Like Tarator or Skordalia (page 600), a terrific use of nuts as sauce.

Diced onions mix well with fusilli and penne, so those are the pasta shapes most often used here, but you can use spaghetti if you prefer. Best with Spanish onions (the large yellow ones); add a handful of black olives if you like, too.

If you can’t find pizzocheri, a buckwheat pasta cut like fettuccine, you have two choices: make it yourself (page 542) or substitute any fettuccinelike pasta. If you can’t find Taleggio (already a compromise, because when I had this dish it was made with a local Alpine cheese whose name exists only in dialect), use fontina (real fontina, if you can find it, from the Valle d’Aosta), or another fairly strong but not too hard or harsh cheese.

A Ligurian specialty, usually made with “stamped” pasta—pasta that is rolled out and then cut with dies in special designs. You can use any cut pasta for this, though perhaps it’s best with fresh pasta like malfatti (page 542). If you have Tapenade (page 604), simply stir it into any tomato sauce to get the same effect.

A fast, classic pasta sauce popular not only in Rome but throughout central and southern Italy. Arrabbiata means “angry,” and this sauce should be not only spicy but also strong, with the taste of garlic that has been browned, not just colored—as well as a good dose of chile.

Another classic, this one Roman, that simply cannot be omitted; to do so would be a huge disservice to beginners. This is a great snack, late-night meal, or starter. For variety, toss in a couple of tablespoons of toasted fresh bread crumbs (page 580) or start with a few anchovy fillets along with the garlic and chile.

I featured this little group of recipes in my New York Times column and in The Minimalist Cooks Dinner, but it’s so instructive, important, and wonderful that I felt it belonged here as well. All (well, almost all) the variations begin with bits of cured meat cooked until crisp, around which are built a number of different sauces of increasing complexity. Most people insist that the “genuine” meat for these recipes is pancetta—salted, cured, and rolled pork belly. Pancetta is available at almost any decent Italian deli and at many specialty stores, but you can use bacon (or even better, if you can find it, guanciale, which is cured pig’s jowl; see the back of the book for mail-order sources). Pecorino Romano is the cheese of choice here, but Parmesan is also good.

These are hand-rolled spaghetti from Tuscany; they’re thick, like bucatini, but have no holes. They must be boiled right away, or they will stick together. I think this is a fine project for a rainy afternoon with a ten- or twelve-year-old who likes to cook. If you’re not in the mood, simply make spaghetti and follow the directions for this wonderful and simple sauce. This—as you’ll quickly gather—is poor people’s food, a rather meager dish. This does not prevent it from being delicious, which it is, but you might want to follow it with a meat or fish course and vegetables.

A classic ravioli filling. Top with any tomato sauce.

Every traveler to Italy’s countryside tells stories about elderly couples seen out on the hillsides scavenging for greens. One of the things they do with the greens is fill pasta. One of my favorite quotes about ravioli was from a friend: “The older my grandmother gets, the bigger her ravioli.” If you’re unskilled, start with big ones; you will be far more successful. Remember that in Italy there have long been people—women, it’s safe to guess—who specialize in handmade pasta; it is a skill and an art, and unless you practice frequently, you’re not likely to get good at it. But it can be fun, and you can always choose to make cannelloni; see page 545.

This is a very rich pasta dough, as made in Emilia-Romagna. My feeling is if you’re taking the trouble to make fresh pasta, it ought to be sensational. This recipe meets that qualification. If this is the first time you’ve made fresh pasta, allow extra time; the rolling process takes some getting used to. But the dough is very sturdy and can be worked over and over, so eventually you’ll get it right. And, believe me, it will be easier each time you do it.

Spaetzle is harder to spell than make. In fact, it’s one of the easiest and most impressive side dishes there is, a noodle whose dough is about as complicated as pancake batter and that can be crisped up in a pan to create a delicious accompaniment for almost any poultry or pork dish, especially braised ones. Once you get the technique down, you’ve got plenty of latitude with how you flavor these fresh little dumplings. The recipe here is for plain spaetzle, though adding two or three tablespoons of an assortment of flavorings in the first step will infuse them with taste without changing the method at all. Try pureed chives, roasted and minced garlic, chopped shallots, and so on.

Interestingly, though this is usually and correctly associated with Eastern Europe, I had it first in northeastern Italy. That’s not entirely surprising, because the Alto Adige region of Italy, also known as the Tyrol, was part of Austria until after World War I. Often thickened with rice, this soup can also be used as a sauce for pasta; see the variation.

Here, meatballs—usually called polpette, at least in Rome—are made with a load of fresh Parmesan, lightened with parsley, and served in a delicious broth, with just a bit of pasta. It’s filling soup but not overwhelming. Although you can assemble many of its components in advance—the meatballs, pasta, carrots—it’s best to do the actual cooking at the last minute. This soup will lose its light texture if allowed to sit with the meatballs and pasta in it for too long.

Given all the fuss that has been made about the difficulty of producing the real thing, I wouldn’t blame you if you bought “instant” polenta. But polenta—and its identical Romanian cousin, mamaliga—is basically cornmeal mush, ethereal when made correctly and hardly neurosurgery. First off, forget about stirring clockwise for 40 minutes with a long-handled wooden spoon or any of the other myths you’ve heard about how it has to be made. If you want great creamy polenta, cook the cornmeal very slowly and add as much butter as you can in good conscience. Second, this is a case where Parmigiano-Reggiano, the real Parmesan, will shine. Finally, note that the amount of water you use is variable: use 5 cups if you want to make very firm polenta that you can later grill or sauté; use more water if you want smooth, soft polenta, into which you will stir cheese and serve as a simple side dish or perhaps with a little tomato sauce. The following recipe is based on one food writer Mitchell Davis learned from the chef at Cibreo in Florence, Italy. You could, of course, omit one or all of the herbs if you didn’t have them on hand. With herbs or without, this polenta is great with any Italian roast or braised dish or with simply grilled Italian sausage.