Weeknight Meals

Roasting brings out the sweetness of vegetables and intensifies their fresh flavors. Vary the vegetables if you wish, but follow this general pattern: Roast the vegetables, remove skins if necessary, puree, and flavor the puree with fresh herbs or garlic. Serve over hot pasta or use as a sauce for lasagna.

Eggplant, zucchini, sweet onions, and tomatoes all roasted together thicken by themselves to make a deeply flavored sauce for pasta. It’s a meal that’s ready in less than half an hour.

Kids love “mac and cheese.” When I make it from scratch, I know what’s in it—all healthy ingredients! Here’s how to do it, saving time and energy in the convection oven.

If you make this ahead of time, keep it refrigerated but bring it to room temperature before serving.

These little cubes of chicken resemble chicken nuggets and are perfect when you’re trying to think of something to feed children. Eliminate the hot spices if the kids object (but one of my granddaughters announced, “I like hot!”).

This is a great quick snack or appetizer. To make it a bit heartier, add more toppings like chopped green onions, diced peppers, bits of sausage, or additional cheese.

This is a perfect accompaniment to an autumn meal of roast pork or chicken. You’ll use two oven racks for this recipe. To serve as a vegetarian main course, serve sautéed greens and steamed, herbed wild rice on the side.

This old favorite is a quick snack or accompaniment to a simple soup and salad meal. You can get the bread ready for roasting as the oven preheats. In the summer, I like to serve slices of toasted bread with a topping of chopped or thinly sliced fresh tomatoes from the garden.

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.

Our friend Franco Azzara made this memorable pasta dish for us during a recent visit to his home in the Gallura region of Sardinia. I marveled at how quickly he put it together, and at the complex flavor of the raw sauce—just fresh tomatoes, basil and mint, and other savory seasonings, whipped up in a food processor, no cooking necessary. I thank him for sharing this Azzara family recipe, one that I know you will enjoy both for its ease and convenience and for its brilliant flavors.

I love cauliflower, but I know not everyone shares my passion for this nutritious but sometimes bland vegetable. This recipe shows that the right cooking method and complementary ingredients can make a cauliflower dish that can steal the show. As is my way with most vegetables, I skillet-cook the cauliflower—slowly sautéing it with little or no added moisture. That way, more of the essential vegetable flavor is retained and intensified, adding layers of caramelization. Here, too, the companion vegetables enhance the cauliflower, with olives lending earthy complexity, and cherry tomatoes giving acidity and freshness. This can be made in advance and reheated. And if you happen to have some left over, it can be the base for a great risotto, or for dressing a plate of pasta for two.

Juicy pork chops, smothered with slowly cooked onions and topped with melted cheese, are certain to make mouths water. You can prepare these in advance—browning the chops and cooking the onions—then complete the skillet cooking and baking as your guests are seated. Thick chops from the pork loin are my favorite, and the ones used in the recipe. Leaner rib chops will work as well but should be cooked a few minutes less.

As I wrote in this chapter’s introduction, the fishermen of Bagnara, a beautiful port on the Calabrian coast just north of the Strait of Messina, are renowned for their skill in catching the magnificent swordfish that migrate to this corner of the Tyrrhenian Sea every year. During our recent visit, I was not surprised to learn that the cooks of Bagnara are equally skilled when it comes to cooking pesce spada as well. The recipe I share with you here is among the simplest and best I have ever tasted, anywhere. Of course, as always in seafood cookery, the freshness of the fish is the key to success, so be sure to get swordfish at its absolute best.

As the name of this traditional dish suggests, it is made from the few ingredients available to a shepherd in remote pastures. Yet, in my experience, some of the best pasta sauces in Italy come from such a limited larder of ingredients. A fine example is this dressing for rigatoni, created with a bit of sausage, dried grating cheese, fresh ricotta, peperoncino, and fresh basil. And if you toss in other fresh herbs in season, your rigatoni alla pastora will have a slightly different taste each time.

Ascoli is a city in the Marche region known for its big green olives. They add a distinctive local flavor to this sauce of tomatoes and canned tuna, a pasta dressing found in many regions of Italy. If you can’t find Ascolane olives, other green Italian olives will do. Do not be afraid to alter some of the other ingredients to make your own version of this tasty sauce. For example, anchovies add complexity, but you could omit them if you choose. And though chopped parsley is fine, a little mint and/or a little oregano could go far. Also, do not feel compelled to use the exact pasta shape: I call for ziti here, but fusilli, shells, or mafalde could all add a new dimension to this dish.

Zucchini is such an abundant and tasty vegetable, yet too often is bland and unpleasing when served. This preparation is simple and full of flavor. The anchovies provide much of it, and if you crave the anchovy taste you can increase the amount used. On the other hand, if you are apprehensive about anchovies, cut the amount in half. For extra spice, add crushed red pepper as well. Serve this hot, as an appetizer or a side dish, or prepare it in advance and serve at room temperature. It’s delicious either way (and thus an excellent buffet item). The savory zucchini makes a great pasta sauce, too—simply toss with hot drained ziti (or other short hollow pasta) and top with grated cheese.

This uncooked dressing, enriched with ricotta and butter, is delicious and quite different from the herb-based pestos I’ve found in other regions. You can blend it together in a bowl while the pasta water is heating up and have a distinctive pasta appetizer or main course in minutes. To retain its vibrant, fresh flavors, it is important not to cook the pesto, just toss it with the tagliatelle and serve.

Thick tuna steaks are not just for grilling. The stovetop technique here is quick and convenient. You use one big skillet for browning the fish steaks, make a simple (yet complex-tasting) sauce, and put the two together for a final brief braise that marries the flavors perfectly. This is the true alla Genovese method. If you prefer grilling to pan-cooking, however, you can certainly omit the first step of flouring and frying the steaks, and make the sauce separately. Use a smaller saucepan in this case, preparing the sauce as in the recipe, starting with the sauté of garlic, anchovies, and porcini in 2 tablespoons olive oil. (Use the other 3 tablespoons olive oil, and 1/2 teaspoon salt, to season the fish before grilling.) One advantage of a separate sauce is that it can be finished ahead of time, so when your guests arrive you only have to fire up the stove and cook the fish. And you’ll find it delicious with bass, codfish, or salmon as well as tuna. In fact, this sauce is so good, I suggest you have a good slab of focaccia to mop up the pan.

This venerable Lombard specialty belies its literal name. Pitocchi (taken from the Greek word for “poor”) were beggars who roamed the Padana lowlands during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries seeking sustenance; presumably a plain rice dish was what they got. Though simple to prepare, today’s riso alla pitocca is far from meager. Quite the contrary, it is rich in flavor from the pestata base and loaded with succulent chicken chunks.