Chicory

Add Sherry vinegar right to the baking dish to turn the juices from the roasted vegetables into a simple, vibrant vinaigrette.

Can't find Treviso, the long, thin variety of radicchio? Substitute endive or any other member of the bitter chicory family to play off the sweet citrus dressing.

Fruit, cheese, and nuts are a winning combination. This bright vinaigrette is also excellent on a salad with apricots, goat cheese, and pistachios.

A generous handful of mint leaves adds a tongue-tingling surprise, reinforcing this salad's zesty freshness.

This salad is perfect for a weekend lunch or a quick weeknight dinner.

"The best thing about serving a braise," says chef Cruz Goler, "is that timing isn't critical, making this a great party dish." French in technique but Italian in spirit, the recipe calls for pleasantly bitter Treviso radicchio to act as a foil to the rich pork. Be sure to let the pork cool in its liquid so that the braised meat can continue to soak up the sauce.

Among the many virtues of this salad is that it can be made ahead very successfully and it also looks so attractive.

The dressing is what makes this salad: it’s sooo delicious I use it to marinate chicken and fish, drizzle it on pasta salads, or even toss some with boiled new potatoes to make an Italian potato salad. When you make it, double or triple the quantity so you’ll always have it on hand to toss with your favorite foods.

Think of this bruschetta as a portable salad that doesn’t require utensils or a plate—perfect for entertaining!

The eye-popping combination of hues in this salad is sure to perk up the appetite, which in turn stimulates digestive enzymes. Pairing grapefruit and avocado also delivers nutritionally: Red grapefruit contains lycopene—which may help lower risk of heart disease and pancreatic, lung, and prostate cancers—and the antioxidant is best absorbed when eaten with healthy fat, such as that contained in avocado.

Papaya is packed with vitamin C and beta-carotene; endive is an excellent source of fiber and vitamins A and C.

This version of pasta salad ditches the mayonnaise-based dressing for a lighter and brighter vinaigrette of flaxseed oil, lemon juice, and vinegar. It also incorporates ample fresh herbs, a variety of vegetables, and kamut pasta—a protein-rich whole-wheat pasta that contains healthy amounts of the antioxidants vitamin E and selenium. Other types of whole-wheat pasta can be used instead. The salad makes a great side for a potluck, but it works as a main course, too.

This was one of the original ten pizzas we served at the Pizzeria. I knew I wanted to offer a potato pizza, and I love the combination of potatoes and Gorgonzola.

The perfect example of how good a few simple ingredients, combined and prepared correctly, can be. When we can get it, our preferred variety for this is radicchio di Treviso, which has an oblong head. The roasted heads look so pretty lined up on a platter that they make the perfect addition to an outdoor meal served family or buffet style. As always, the quality of the balsamico you use is essential to the quality of the finished dish.

The red, green, and white tricolore salad, traditionally composed of radicchio, frisée, and endive, is just one of the many ways that Italians celebrate their flag. I like tricolore salads, but this version, which is tossed in an anchovy-enhanced dressing with lots of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, was my way of sneaking the flavors of a Caesar salad onto the Pizzeria menu without calling it a Caesar. In the rare instance that a Caesar salad is done well, it is one of my favorite salads, but Caesar salad is such a cliché on Italian-American menus—and it’s not even Italian; it was invented in Tijuana—I could never have put it on my menu as such.

I was introduced to the concept of a chopped salad in the 1970s at La Scala Boutique, a casual offshoot, now closed, of the Beverly Hills institution La Scala. The salad, which they call the Jean Leon Chopped Salad (it’s now available at the original La Scala restaurant), is made of iceberg lettuce, salami, and mozzarella, all so finely chopped that you almost don’t have to chew it, then topped with ceci, or chickpeas, and a tangy red wine vinaigrette. I was totally addicted to that salad. I’ve been making chopped salads ever since, always with La Scala’s version in mind, but the one we serve at the Pizzeria with aged provolone and Sweet 100 tomatoes is my best yet.

If subtlety is your thing, this Mozzarella Bar creation is not for you. Each crostino is composed of a really strong vinegar presence from the escarole, which is marinated before being grilled and again after; a strong flavor of smoke from the bacon; and sweetness from caramelized shallots. The role that the cheese plays is to tame those aggressive flavors but the result is by no means bland. The recipe for the shallots makes more than you will need for this recipe, but they are essentially pickled, so they will keep for several weeks in the refrigerator. You can use the leftovers on sandwiches or spooned over grilled beef, chicken, or pork.

If I had to name a signature secondo at the Osteria, this agrodolce preparation of quail would be it. The quail are stuffed with a savory mixture of pancetta and herbs, and then drizzled with honey and aged balsamico condimento. When Matt and I travel to fund-raising and other food events around the country, this is the meat dish we most often choose to serve because it can be prepared ahead of time, and I’ve never met anyone—not even quail skeptics—who wasn’t completely enamored of it. It’s also easy to pair with wine. The gamey flavor of the bird and the pork can handle a big, fruity wine, and it doesn’t overpower even the finest wines.

The first time I ate at the Atelier of Joël Robuchon in Paris, I saw a whole fish delivered to another customer that I could tell had been boned and deep-fried. The skeleton had been removed but the head and tail, which flipped up so nicely on the plate, had been left intact. I watched in awe as the diner carved into the fish and ate it head to tail, without any of the usual fuss required to eat around the bones of a whole fish. I was so impressed that I told Matt I wanted to put something like that on the Osteria menu. He chose to grill the fish rather than fry it, but it’s the same idea. We chose to use orata, also called dorade or sea bream, a classic Mediterranean variety, because you see whole branzino on every Italian menu from California to Campagna, and we wanted to introduce our customers to something different. We wrap the fish in a fig leaf in the fall and a radicchio leaf the rest of the year before grilling it in order to contain the herbs stuffed inside the fish. Boning the fish is the most difficult part of making this dish—and I won’t lie to you: it is tricky. I promise that with patience, a good sharp knife (preferably a fish knife or a 6-inch boning knife) and fish tweezers, you will be able to do it.

The crostini selection served at just about every restaurant near my house in Italy includes toppings of chicken livers, chopped tomatoes, and white bean purée, such as this one.We simmer the beans with tons of garlic and olive oil, and drizzle the crostini with saba, Sardinian grape must. If you can’t find saba, substitute vin cotto, a sweet, syrupy condiment that means “cooked wine,” or aged balsamico condimento. It is a nice option for vegetarians.We grill the radicchio for these crostini but gave instructions for cooking it on the stovetop because it would be unrealistic to light the grill just to cook a few leaves of the radicchio. That said, if you happen to have the grill on . . .