Dutch Oven

Pork meat, which is nutritional and economical, is used a lot in Italy. Using the tenderloin for this dish guarantees a tender result, but one can use boneless shoulder or leg meat instead, cutting it into thin slices. You can also make this dish with chicken breast or boneless chicken legs. The sun-dried tomatoes bring a lot of flavor to the dish; I use them whole, or sometimes purée them in a processor and spread the paste on the meat, but in this recipe I slice them.

Rollatini are a popular dish in Italy. They can be made with chicken, veal, or pork, and the stuffing can be just about anything you like, but do include cheese. The delight of rollatini is the oozing cheese when you cut into them. So, whatever you do, do not skimp on the cheese. This dish was very popular on the menus of Italian American restaurants in the sixties and seventies. Fontina has great melting qualities; when it is not readily available, Muenster cheese is often substituted.

Beef shoulder, usually called the chuck, is the source of many flavorful cuts of meat. One of my favorites for braising is the compact boneless chuck roast, taken from underneath the shoulder blade. There’s so much connective tissue and fat in the meat that long, moist cooking will produce soft, delicious meat, whatever you put in the pot. This braise, however, is a special one, inspired by my connection to and love for Venice and its special place in culinary history—La Serenissima, as the state of Venice was called, was a center for the spice trade and the silk route through the Middle East to the Orient for over 600 years. The use of exotic, imported spices in cooking signaled a well-to-do household with a rich kitchen. I get excited just assembling the spices and flavorings (including coffee and cocoa) for this. And when the exotic perfume arises from the bubbling wine that fills the pot, I hate to leave the kitchen, even though there’s almost no work to do once the beef begins its 3 hours of braising.

This is one of those almost miracle dishes: it is ready in 10 minutes, it is quite inexpensive, it is full of flavor and texture and very gratifying, and all of my grandchildren love it. The brininess of the sea will come forth with the underlying garlic, lemon, and olive oil, the flavors all tied together by bread crumbs, then captured in the opening shells of this sweet mollusk. But one thing is required of you in order for this miracle to happen. The mussels you buy must be absolutely the freshest; otherwise, turn the page and go to another recipe. To enjoy this dish best, you must serve it piping hot in hot bowls, because the shells cool quickly. Grilled country bread and spoons will help scoop up every last drop. If you have some left over, remove mussel meat from the shells and return it to the sauce to make a great condiment for a plate of pasta the next day.

Here you prepare the tomatoes and sauté the base of onions and garlic in the exact same way as in the previous recipe, but the final sauce is unique. First you soften the eggplant chunks in the pan before adding the tomatoes. Then you cook the vegetables covered for a long time, so the chunks break down even more. The aim is to soften the eggplant so much that it almost melts into the tomatoes—which explains the traditional name for this sauce, melanzana affogata: literally, “suffocated eggplant.” The eggplant does not disappear, though, either in flavor or texture, I assure you. If you love eggplant as much as I do, you will want to make this sauce—and plenty of it.

I suggest you use duck legs to make this guazzetto, because they are juicier. But if you can’t buy duck legs separately, you can cook the whole duck. Another way to skin this cat is to remove the duck’s breasts, make the guazzetto with the rest of the duck, and sear the breasts to be served as a second course or a treat for another meal.

This versatile soup base is not really a broth, in the way my turkey broth is—that is, a clear liquid strained of all the ingredients that gave it flavor. In truth, the base starts cooking with several pounds of potatoes, carrots, and celery, and they stay in there. Yet, remarkably, it ends up light, clear, and clean-tasting, like a broth. To enjoy the clarity and consistency of the base, often I’ll add nothing more than rice, for texture and flavor. Onion and poached garlic make a flavorful yet light cream soup. On the other hand, I might fill the base with lots of textured ingredients, like mushrooms and barley, or lentils and ditalini pasta. And vegetables that break down during cooking and melt away, such as parsnip or winter squash and chestnut, utterly transform the texture.

Corn, polenta, came to Italy from the New World, and yet, along with pasta and rice, it is one of the beloved starch dishes of Italy. Polenta was for the northeastern regions of Italy what potatoes were for Ireland. Corn grew in abundance there and fed many people and still does, so much so that the people of the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region are known as polentoni, polenta eaters. I come from the region, and I grew up eating polenta and still do eat it often. As a child I had just cooked or leftover polenta for breakfast with milk and sugar or with caffe latte, or pan-fried with some sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on top, as well as in endless ways accompanying vegetables, meats, fish, and cheeses. It is rather simple to cook—all you need is cornmeal, water, salt, olive oil, and a few bay leaves. When done, you can enjoy the polenta piping hot or let it cool and take shape, then cut and fry it, or grill and bake it, topped with anything you choose. In this chapter you’ll find it with leeks, with bacon lardoons, with Montasio cheese, or with just an egg yolk nestled in a piping-hot mound of polenta. Beyond the flavor of polenta, I look for the mouth feel, and that depends on the grind. Instant polenta will give you a smooth puddinglike texture, the medium grind a bit more texture, and the coarse will have almost a raspy feel in your mouth. There is also white polenta, milled from white corn, which is used much in the Veneto. And the polenta taragna, which has buckwheat milled along with the yellow corn, has much texture and flavor. The one important caution in cooking polenta is to get it smooth. Start it in cold water and whisk well while it cooks; it may take a bit longer but ensures lump-free polenta. Even though polenta might look done, make sure you cook it the recommended time; its digestibility and flavor increase with longer cooking time.

Guazzetti are sauces made by slowly simmering meat, game, or poultry in stock, creating a velvety texture that coats pasta wonderfully. Traditionally, a guazzetto got its great flavor from bones with little flesh, but it works with meaty cuts too. Country ribs can be so meaty you’ll have more pork than you need for the sauce, so enjoy it in sandwiches or salads or as a ravioli stuffing.