Canned Tomato

Serve this as a side dish in shallow bowls, or over rice as a main dish.

Here’s a hearty stew made entirely of convenient ingredients (unless you opt to cook the beans from scratch). Serve with simple grain dishes or tortilla specialties that don’t include beans, such as Mushroom and Bell Pepper Quesadillas or Soft Tacos (page 172).

This grain-and-bean duo makes a basic, hearty main dish. Some steamed broccoli or green beans and a colorful salad complete the meal.

Gnocchi are hearty dumplings made with potato flour and semolina. You’ll find them in the frozen foods section of most any supermarket, shelved near ravioli and other frozen pastas. Have the spinach or chard washed and chopped before starting so this dish can come together quickly.

Pasta isn’t customarily seasoned with curry, but I’ve long enjoyed this combination.

Here’s another great way to embellish a good prepared pasta sauce.

Fresh herbal overtones lift the flavor of this instant soup. White beans make a creamy base for soups, dips, and sauces.

This features a base of canned beans and is best served at room temperature.

In this dish a hunk of ham is left whole as it cooks with the peas. Not cutting it up is very country.

Small leeks are essential for this dish.

In translation, arroz con pollo simply means “rice with chicken.” When I was the chef at Cafeteria, the Latin American cooks made this dish for our staff meal just about every day. Its truly authentic flavors are homey and satisfying. I prefer using whole canned tomatoes and crushing them by hand because I have more control of the texture; plus the flavor is a lot better than chopped canned tomatoes.

This recipe is a hybrid from different schools of thought. The texture is that of shredded beef, which is authentic Texan, but the flavor is the American Southwest. The dried chilies and the chocolate give this dish an amazing rich, smoky depth. If you’re a purist and think adding beans is a sacrilege, leave them out, but they do work really well here. This is truly one of the best dishes I’ve ever made.

Simple ingredients with complexity and depth add up to an Italian classic. Oh, and did I mention this is mind-blowing? When purchasing the veal shanks, check that they are pink and smell sweet. The most important step in making Osso Buco is browning the meat. This develops a really rich brown color on the meat and adds a ton of flavor to the base of the sauce. Serve with Soft Polenta (page 244) or Garlic-Chive Mashed Potatoes (page 237). The gremolata is also good on a grilled fish.

Growing up, my family had a tradition that whoever got the bay leaf had to do the dishes.

My husband loves tortilla chips, but he won’t touch those little pieces left in the bottom of the bag, so I crush them with a rolling pin to make a coating for boneless chicken breasts. This family favorite can be easily expanded into a party meal. Ordinarily, I serve his with rice, and sometimes I like to add black beans, too.

You can use any dried lasagna noodles in this easy no-boil method, just be sure that the noodles themselves are completely covered with the filling and sauce.

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.

Dress your fresh strangozzi with this meaty, multitextured sauce—ground veal and chopped chicken livers cooked in a tomato base—for a hearty dish that will delight carnivores and pasta-lovers simultaneously. This is also a great sauce to incorporate into risotto. If you are not enthusiastic about the flavor of chicken liver, use only 1/2 pound, for a subtle flavor boost. But if you love the organic richness of livers, as I do, use a whole pound. This recipe makes a big batch of sauce, so you can use half and freeze half (it will keep well for 4 to 6 weeks).