Tomato

This dish is a real mouthful—literally! The pancetta-rich sauce and cheesy meatballs are each delicious on their own and make an irresistible combination. For years my aunt Raffy and I have agreed to disagree on the “right” way to make Amatriciana sauce. She starts with whole tomatoes that cook down to a chunkier sauce, and adds a bit of wine as it cooks. I prefer the lighter, smoother texture of a sauce made with crushed tomatoes (which also save a bit of effort) and think it tastes fresher without the wine. Either way, though, this recipe is a keeper that you’ll turn to again and again.

Oil flavored with sun-dried tomatoes and lots and lots of fresh herbs is the secret to these vegetarian sandwiches; I use it both as a marinade for the grilled veggies and also to moisten the bread. Creamy goat cheese smoothes out the sharp flavor of the tomatoes. This is perfect picnic food, whether you’re packing the sandwiches for the beach or as a reward after a long hike.

Liguria is a coastal region in northern Italy known for its fresh seafood and many variations of fish stew, among other things. My version uses just white fish with lots of veggies so it is lighter than many traditional fish stews. It is still sophisticated and is made with white wine, which is a perfect pairing with seafood.

Beef filet always makes an occasion special, but in the case of these mini beef kebabs it’s the parsley sauce—almost a fresh salsa—that makes the dish shine. For an interesting change, mix it up and substitute fresh pineapple chunks for the tomatoes; they make for a surprisingly harmonious combination. One note: Don’t marinate the beef any longer than three hours because the vinegar in the marinade will break down the meat and ruin its texture.

When it comes to cocktail food, I like one-biters and I like things that are dainty and beautiful. These pretty little tarts fit that bill and more. They taste as fantastic as they look. I prefer to use black-olive tapenade because of its richness, but you can certainly try green-olive, which is tangier.

You can buy sun-dried tomatoes already reconstituted and soaked in olive oil, but they’re expensive. It’s certainly easy enough—and only slightly less convenient if you think ahead—to begin with dried tomatoes. They’re almost as tough as shoe leather when you buy them but can easily be reconstituted: Soak them in hot water to cover until they’re soft, about an hour. (You might change the water once it cools to hasten the softening.) Drain the tomatoes and marinate them in a good fruity olive oil to cover (a half cup or more) for at least an hour. After that, making the tomato paste takes just a moment. Traditionally, the tomatoes are pounded, usually with garlic, in a mortar and pestle. I use a small food processor and like the resulting texture very much.

This relish is good with a bit of minced jalapeño or habanero chile if you like hot food. If you have them on hand, don’t hesitate to add up to a quarter cup of fresh herbs, like basil, oregano, or marjoram.

This recipe is basic make it a few times and you’ll find ways to vary it to perfectly suit your tastes.

This is what most Americans are talking about when they say salsa. You can make it hot or not, as you like; it’s a good use for less-than-perfect tomatoes and an excellent sauce–side dish accompaniment for anything grilled, particularly seafood.

This is about as unlikely a dish as I’ve ever come across, a soupy combination containing little more than the two main ingredients and canned tomatoes. Not only does the thought of it tweak the mind doesn’t this sound something like a bread sandwich?—but it counters a number of the conventions that have been drummed into our collective consciousness. Chief among these is that the dish is at its best when the pasta is cooked until it is fat, juice-laden, and quite soft. Here there is no need to seize the ideal moment at which the pasta is al dente; in fact you cook the pasta somewhat past that point, and it is even acceptable for it to sit for a while. Nor need you worry about the “correct” pasta shape; pasta with potatoes requires several different shapes, in varying quantities, preferably broken (it began as a way to use up the bits and pieces of dried pasta lying around in the cupboard). Finally, not only may you serve pasta with potatoes as a leftover, but it’s just as good after sitting for a day. So feel free to make a half batch of this pasta if you like, but since it’s no more work to make this amount and it keeps for days, I advise making the full recipe.

This is a technique popular in Liguria—the Italian Riviera—in which all of the clam liquid is used as part of the sauce, but without much effort. The result is delicious pasta in a little rich, thick sauce—along with a pile of clams. Use the smallest clams you can find; cockles are fine, too. Figure eight to twelve littlenecks or twenty-four cockles per person. Wash and scrub the clamshells very well, as they will cook in the sauce and any unremoved sand will find its way into your mouth. Discard any open or cracked clams before cooking; those that remain shut after cooking may be opened with a knife.

One of my favorite elaborations on a simple tomato sauce is the recipe for pasta with meaty bones. It requires considerably more time but almost no extra effort, and it boasts the wonderful depth of flavor, silken texture, and satisfying chewiness of slow-cooked meat. Southern Italian in origin, it begins with bony meat (or meaty bones) and requires lengthy simmering. Otherwise, it’s little different from basic tomato sauce. Whatever you use, the idea remains constant: meat is a supporting player, not the star, so an eight- to twelve-ounce piece of veal shank, for example, provides enough meat, marrow, and gelatin to create a luxuriously rich sauce. Just cook until the meat falls off the bone, then chop it and return it to the sauce along with any marrow. This sauce is rich enough without grated cheese; a better garnish is a large handful of coarsely chopped parsley or basil. Either freshens the sauce while adding color and flavor.

Few things are simpler than a quick tomato sauce over pasta, but as an unending diet it can become somewhat tiresome. Here it’s completely jazzed by the addition of a hefty amount of garlic and a few anchovies. The transformation is as easy as it is remarkable. Canned anchovies—packed in olive oil—are the easiest to use here. Salted anchovies, if you have them, are fine also, but you must mince them first (after cleaning them, of course, which you do under running water, stripping the meat from the skeleton).

The dish has a thick creaminess that you can never duplicate with canned tomatoes, no matter how good they are. So the season when you can make it—when there are good, ripe tomatoes in the market—is fairly short; where I live, just two or at the most three months a year. There is an ideal instant for serving this sauce: When the tomatoes soften and all of their juices are in the skillet, the sauce suddenly begins to thicken. At that moment, it is at its peak; another minute or two later, many of the juices will have evaporated and, although the essence of the sauce is equally intense, it won’t coat the pasta as well. If this happens, just add a little fresh olive oil or butter to the finished dish.

This dish of slow-cooked green beans yields soft and sweet beans. It is a perfect side dish for a midwinter meal because it does not depend on sun-ripened tomatoes or crisp just-picked beans for its appeal.

Cassoulet in forty minutes or less is heresy, of course, but even “real” cassoulet was designed as a bean stew containing whatever meat, preferably fatty and flavorful, was available to throw in. That’s the spirit here, too. Although the pork tenderloin need not be browned before further cooking, the sausage benefits from a quick browning, definitely worth the five-minute effort. If you can get duck confit, just brown it lightly on both sides, adding both it and its fat to the stew in place of the duck breast.

Here’s how to keep a skinless, boneless chicken breast moist while giving it a crust, without using a lot of fat. This technique relies on two properties of the chicken breast that make it more like fish than like other meat: it cooks quickly, and it contains a fair amount of moisture. This enables you to start cooking the breasts with just a bit of fat over fairly high heat to begin browning, then lower the heat and cover the pan, which not only allows the meat to steam in its own juices but maintains the nicely browned exterior (on one side anyway). If you use mass produced commercial chicken, the results will be somewhat cottony. Free-range or kosher chickens are usually considerably better.

Cooking in packages requires a small leap of faith to determine that the food is done, because once you open the packages you want to serve them. This method works well.