Root Vegetable

Winter squash and chestnuts are a wonderful combination with this base, adding nutty and sweet flavors and hearty texture. Any firm winter squash is suitable. Use fresh chestnuts or packaged peeled chestnuts (sold frozen or freeze-dried). If using fresh chestnuts, see my peeling method below.

Poached garlic lends its lovely flavor to the soup, and then everything gets a quick whirl in the food processor, producing a light, creamy soup—without cream. Add some crunch to this with Cheesy Crostini (page 60).

This soup is nice without the addition of garlic purée, marvelous with it. If you like, add short shreds of Savoy cabbage in place of some of the cauliflower, or make Savoy-cabbage soup with poached garlic purée instead.

You can make a cup or a gallon of delicious soup by cooking rice in the soup base: multiply or divide this formula as needed. If you like the lighter consistency, use 1/4 cup of uncooked rice per quart of base; for a denser soup, use 1/3 cup. Don’t start cooking the rice more than 15 minutes before serving, though, since the grains continue to expand and absorb broth even off the heat. Serve immediately after the rice is cooked.

This is a traditional Tuscan soup from the area of Arezzo, made with bread grilled over an open fire and virgin olive oil, unfiltered, straight from the press—the frantoio. Believe me, a pot of beans never tasted this good. As bread is a principal ingredient here, use one with fine flavor, preferably an artisan-baked loaf that has great crust and an airy crumb with lots of holes. Old bread—pane vecchio—is best, because it is already dry, but day-old or even fresh bread can be used.

You can turn this soup into a main course by adding pieces of cooked chicken. Small shrimp are another delicious enhancement: cut about 1/2 pound of shelled, cleaned shrimp into 1-inch pieces, and stir them into the pot when the zucchini is tender. Remove from the stove and let the shrimp cook in the residual heat.

It is so simple to transform a hard, homely celery root into a lovely salad with delicate taste and texture. Just drop the big root—a softball-sized unpeeled round—into a big pot of water, and let it cook for an hour or more. This technique retains and mellows the root’s wonderful flavor, and makes it easy to peel and cut it up too. Dress this simply, or take the salad in a different direction (see variations).

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

This beautiful salad really depends on good ingredients: small firm beets with fresh unblemished greens still attached; a crisp tart apple or perhaps ripe fresh peaches or Black Mission figs; and aged goat cheese with a crumbly consistency. Roasting the beets to intensify the sweetness is also a key to the best salad.

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.

The inspiration for this recipe came on a recent visit to France. In a small bistro, I was served an elegant but amazingly simple gratin, just a thin layer of sautéed onions with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano on top, baked in a hot oven to form a crisp, fragile delicacy. When I got home, I decided to replicate it—but with a base of thin bread slices underneath the onions, to make it easier to assemble and serve. To my great delight, the bread became wonderfully crisp in the oven, adding more texture, and at the same time captured the delicious onion juices. The key to wonderful flavor here is slowly cooking the onions in a big skillet—they should be meltingly soft without any browning, and moist without excess liquid. Sweet onions are the best—large Vidalia, Maui, Walla Walla, or any other of the fine varieties now available. A gratinate—the Italian term for a baking dish encrusted with cheese or other crisp topping—fills a big sheet pan. It will serve a large group as an appetizer or a lunch dish, or make a great hors d’oeuvre for a crowd, cut in small pieces. You can bake it ahead for convenience, and serve it at room temperature or briefly warmed in the oven.

I love custards—when they are properly baked, that is, so each spoonful feels like velvet and truly melts on the tongue, releasing all its flavors. This is one of the most basic pleasures of eating, one that my family enjoys and that I want to share with you. Here is a custard that has everything: lots of the flavor of fresh mushrooms, dried porcini, sage, garlic, and leeks, all concentrated and deepened in the skillet, and a creamy custard that holds all these flavors in suspension. When a spoonful of this melts on your tongue, you’ll understand why I love custards. Serve it as a first course at a special dinner, or as the centerpiece of a holiday brunch. This recipe is for eight small custards and is easily multiplied to make more. The recipe details the important steps in making any custard, so, if you haven’t made one particularly successfully before, pay special attention. For uniform baking, I recommend that you use identical molds to bake up a batch, if possible. If you don’t have any, I encourage you to buy a set of inexpensive 1/2-cup ceramic molds—get eight or a dozen; either a small shallow soufflé shape or the taller traditional custard cup is fine. You’ll use them forever, I hope.

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.

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.

This recipe is much like the wonderful salad I had at Manfredi’s house. In Palermo, as I mentioned earlier, the insalata cruda e cotta that you can buy at the markets will vary with the season. In America, we can enjoy that same variety, so do not feel confined by these ingredients: use other greens, such as escarole, mesclun, and frisée, together with cooked vegetables such as roasted squash, boiled leeks, boiled beets—anything else you have on hand or enjoy.

This rich and fluffy potato dish takes its name from the French word gâteau, but to me it is quite Italian, layered with cheese, like a pasticiatta or lasagna. It is a great dish for large gatherings: all the goodness of mashed potatoes with an Italian twist.