Anchovy

Duck has in most cases been something you eat in a restaurant. I love duck, and I love serving it at home to family and guests. I hope that this two-step method of cooking cut-up duck pieces in a big skillet or casserole will make you comfortable with cooking duck at home. First you fry the duck by itself for about an hour, slowly; the skillet takes all the fat out of the bird and melts it into a frying medium which leaves the skin golden and crispy and the meat moist, flavorful, and, amazingly, not at all greasy. In the second stage, you build a small sauce and infuse the duck with its savor. I prefer cooking just the duck legs here, as I do for the guazzetto on page 154, as they require minimal trimming and the meat stays moist through the long cooking. If your supermarket doesn’t have duck legs, ask if they can order them; call a few specialty butchers or even a local restaurant provisioner if necessary. Duck legs are worth looking for, because they’re not only convenient and delicious but often less expensive than whole duck. If a whole duck is all you can get, though, it will work fine in this recipe. See below for a simple cutting-up procedure.

This recipe provides a good introduction to the quick skillet sauces and pastas in this section. Typical of these dishes, it’s quick: the sauce itself cooks in 5 minutes in the skillet, and the capellini I’ve paired it with needs barely 2 minutes in the pot; when all is tossed and garnished, the pasta is on the table in 10 minutes. And it demonstrates how well a pasta dish can be created from common pantry ingredients when they are cooked and combined thoughtfully. With its generous amounts of anchovies, capers, peperoncino flakes, garlic, and tomato, I can honestly tell you that this is the kind of pasta I love to eat. The flavors are strong and sharp yet balanced—staccato notes in harmony, to use a musical metaphor. In the recipe, I’ve given a range of amounts for the bold ingredients. If you use the lesser measures of anchovies, capers, peperoncino, and garlic, you will enjoy a distinctive dish suited for most people’s tastes, what I call “middle of the road” at my restaurants. If you use the greater measure, you’ll have the same dish I make for myself at home. Incidentally, you don’t need to use perfect summer tomatoes for this sauce. Even in winter, decent market tomatoes will work as long as they’re not too soft. If none are available, you can make a fine sauce without tomato at all (just don’t substitute canned tomatoes). You’ll need more pasta water for moisture, but otherwise follow the recipe. Like all sauces, this one goes with many pastas. In addition to thin varieties like the capellini, presented here, I suggest linguine, spaghettini, or just regular spaghetti. Remember to coordinate the cooking of the sauce with the cooking time of each kind of pasta. If I was cooking linguine that takes 9 or 10 minutes in the pot, I would put the pasta in first and then start cooking my sauce, reversing the sequence given in the recipe.

Bagna cauda is one of Piemonte’s best-known dishes. The name means “warm bath,” and that’s what it is: a sauce of garlic, butter, oil, and anchovy heated in a deep earthenware container set on the table over a little flame, like a fondue pot. Also on the table are arrayed a great variety of cut vegetables, raw and cooked, to be dipped in the piping-hot sauce, eaten, and savored. In Piemonte, bagna cauda will always include some of the fabulous vegetables for which the region is renowned, such as cardi gobbi from Nizza Monferrato, and the gorgeous long peppers of Carmagnola. At home I serve an assortment of seasonal vegetables: You’ll find some suggestions on the next page. This is a great starter on the table or for a buffet. To make more sauce for a crowd, simply multiply the ingredient amounts given in the recipe.

This kicky sauce is matched in flavor by its dramatic green color. Bright with parsley and with deep notes from the anchovy, salsa verde makes plain grilled fish or meat into something you want to serve to company, and it adds an herby note to rich organ meats or tongue. Try adding a spoonful to soups or tossing with plain boiled potatoes.

Mackerel is a rich fish with fabulous texture and depth of flavor. Though it’s not traditional, preserved lemon adds a piquant, salty touch to a rustic pounded sauce. To make sure the potatoes are crispy when you serve the dish, grill the fish first and fry the potatoes right before serving. Parboiling the potatoes makes it easy to get them crispy, while ensuring they’re cooked through.

I’m an ear man—if we’re talking pig. Crispy pig’s ears are gelatinous, cartilaginous, rich, chewy goodness that make an awfully lovely garnish for a fresh panzanella bursting with summer vegetables. You’ll want to allow about half an ear per person, which should amount to about a pound, depending on the pigs, of course. As with many of the best cuts of the pig, it takes a while to get ears into a perfect state for eating. You can boil them, but to get them perfectly tender and ready for frying, I like to poach them in oil first. You need to plan ahead—they take about six hours in a slow oven—but you could do that the day before, or even in the evening when it’s cooler out, then finish them off the day you’re going to serve them.

Puntarelle is also called Catalonian chicory, though I think of it as a truly Italian vegetable. It is in the chicory family, with thicker stalks tapering to serrated leaves that look a bit like those of a dandelion. The leaves have a little bite to them, with more of a fennel-endive thing going on in the stalks. It might take some searching to find it in the market—you could always try asking your market if they would order it—but it’s worth seeking out. In Rome, puntarelle is traditionally paired with strong flavors such as anchovy and garlic that can match the strong flavor of the vegetable, as I do here, along with an ice-water soak that takes off some of the edge. If you can’t find puntarelle, I suppose you could substitute frisée, but then you’re kind of missing the magic.

Seattle summers are our best-kept secret—with long, lovely days just hot enough to make you want to stay out of the kitchen and linger outside. The perfect appetizer for a patio barbecue, grilled polenta is easy, crisp, and luscious, and is played to its best advantage when topped with juicy heirloom tomatoes brightened with garlic and anchovy. If you like, substitute basil or another favorite tender herb for the mint. This would also be nice served with a handful of baby greens on the plate.

Think of these as the most decadent, upscale version of a deviled egg you’ll ever eat. But instead of rubbery eggs sprinkled with paprika, these soft-boiled beauties reveal moist, velvety yolks, accented by a luxe anchovy mayo. This is the recipe where you want your eggs to be as fresh as possible. Short of keeping your own chickens, go to your farmers’ market and buy local. Don’t get all freaked out if they have a bit of straw or dirt or, um, other debris on the shells. It means they’re fresh, plus eggs have a natural antibiotic coating that protects them until you wash them. Inside, you’ll find bright orange-yellow yolks and an incredible flavor that supermarket eggs just don’t offer.

Some people will tell you that it’s okay to make carne cruda, known as “steak tartare” in fancy French circles, in a food processor. Sorry, no go. You don’t chop it, pulse it, or otherwise mangle it. You freeze it, slice it, crosscut it, and dice it. Period. Yes, chopping the meat by hand requires patience, but it creates the perfect texture. Freezing the meat beforehand makes this job easier. This is one of those recipes where you must use the very best ingredients you can find—the best olive oil, the best imported anchovies—to take this crudo over the top. Buy the best New York strip or tenderloin you can afford, and tell your butcher how you’re serving the meat to ensure you get the very best. For a light meal, serve with plenty of crusty bread and a small salad.

This unusual pesto variation, adapted from a recipe by Colman Andrews in his book Flavors of the Riviera, cries out for grilled or roasted lamb, but you will discover many other ways to use it. In fact, it’s perfectly delicious on simple grilled bread with a glass of white wine or rosé.

Caesar salads may be ubiquitous on menus of all stripes, but a truly memorable one can be hard to find. Our version is unique because it pairs the usual romaine with arugula, which adds a peppery bite. I omit the anchovies from the dressing in favor of tossing them with the salad because I like the texture and the intense bites of salty flavor. Feel free to make this salad more substantial (and savory) with the addition of grilled chicken, shrimp, or even fried oysters. Adding a raw egg yolk to the dressing is optional, but it will create a richer, more stable body.

Niçoise salads are usually made with tuna, but we substituted fresh salmon in this version. You can, of course, make the salad with a couple of cans of tuna; look for Italian oil-packed tuna, which has the best flavor.

Despite all my big Texas talk, the truth is, I don’t make classic chicken-fried steak for myself. Between the prep work and the calorie count, it’s just not practical. Instead, I make something that requires no pounding, no dredging in egg and flour, no inch of oil in the pan. It’s inspired by my favorite steaks growing up: those at Margaret Heinen’s Western Sky, where the cooks would rub crushed garlic into the steaks, very lightly dredge them in flour, and grill them over wood. The light coating was positively delectable. I pan-fry my steak, pair it with boiled and smashed new potatoes, and finish them both with a quick sauce of anchovies, butter, and parsley. I don’t call this chicken-fried, for obvious reasons, but it tastes like Texas just the same.

With a feast of raw meat, the only things separating a gritty fifth-century encampment at the foothills of the Altai Mountains in Kazakhstan and a bistro in Paris, Buenos Aires, New York, or Tokyo are the rimmings. In the modern case, these might involve a glowing egg yolk cradled in a caldera of flesh, slivers of oily anchovy, the pickled plumpness of capers—an interplay of texture and flavor, of raw and cured, oils and acids, aromatics and salt. The spectral freshness and crackling crunch of Halen Môn penetrates through this wonderful exchange and substantiates it—footnotes in the secret life your mind leads during the most intense moments of pleasure at the table.