Ground Pork

In general, these are milder than Italian-style meatballs (Polpette, page 53), with cooked onion and no garlic or cheese. Often served with a cream sauce (and lingonberries), they can be made without one, skewered on toothpicks, and passed at parties. A combination of pork, veal, and beef is best here, but if I had to choose only one meat it would unquestionably be pork.

One of the world’s great dumplings, the samosa has migrated to Southeast Asia and elsewhere. As with most dumplings, the filling is easily varied. And, as with most dumplings, you can use store-bought dumpling wrappers or the simple homemade ones on page 62. But the super rich wrappers here are really the best. Traditionally, you would deep-fry samosas, but more and more often they are baked. They’re terrific either way.

These are the pot stickers popular in Shanghai and many other southern Chinese cities. Panfried until crisp on the bottom and then cooked through by steaming, they have a delicious combination of crunch and chew in the dough and a springy, flavorful center. They are best served hot out of the pan (but beware of their tongue-burning juices!). Gyoza is the Japanese version of this type of dumpling and mandoo the Korean version. They may be filled with pork or have a vegetarian stuffing; usually, their skin is somewhat thinner. You can buy gyoza or mandoo skins at the market or just roll the Chinese skins a little thinner yourself. Dumplings may be filled and dusted with flour and refrigerated, covered, for a couple of hours or frozen for a few days. But they’re really best when cooked right after being filled. Leeks are usually full of sand. The easiest way to clean them in this recipe is to chop them, rinse in a strainer, and shake dry.

Though not traditional, fried wontons are extremely popular. They are an easy finger food for parties and a snack that your kids will love. If you’re making the wrappers, try to get 60 out of the dough, or you may have a little filling left over.

Pelmeni were traditionally frozen before cooking (they’re from Siberia; one would just make a few hundred, throw them in a bag, and put the bag in a barn or outdoors), and some people insist that they’re best when frozen first, though I cannot imagine why that would be. But all dumplings can be frozen successfully after filling and can even be cooked directly from the freezer. Just make sure they’re floured enough to prevent sticking during freezing, or the dough might tear. You may not use all of this filling, but it’s best not to run short. As with pot stickers (Wor Teep, page 63), be sure not to overfill the dumplings or the seams will burst. Any combination of meats will do well as a filling here. If you grind your own, it will be even better; the meat should be ground quite finely. Though the butter suffices as a sauce, you can serve these with sour cream as well if you like.

Unlike the preceding Italian meatballs, these are strongly flavored with garlic, contain no cheese, and are spiked with almonds. They are unusual and great served on a toothpick with a glass of sherry.

Needless to say, you can put these in almost any tomato sauce (pages 606–607) and use them for spaghetti and meatballs. But they’re often served in Italy as a small first course, sometimes over cabbage. I like the combination of veal and pork best, but you can use any combination you like or even all beef.

Chawan-mushi is an egg custard flavored with stock and soy and laced with a number of tasty tidbits. In Tokyo, I had a bowl that contained tiny amounts of myoga (a potent member of the ginger family), shrimp, chicken, ginkgo nut, and yuzu, an Asian citrus fruit. None of these is essential, and you can substitute for any or all of them, as I do here. The fillings, called gu, are supposed to be whatever you have on hand. If you have covered ramekins, they are ideal for this preparation. But covering the pot works just as well.

This sauce seems like a chore, but once you get everything in the pot, it simmers and cooks on its own and yields enough sauce for several luscious meals. (It also freezes well.) When unexpected guests arrive, just cook some pasta and you have dinner ready. What makes this meat sauce unique is the cinnamon, which adds an unexpected, unidentifiably delicious flavor. The kids absolutely love it with gnocchi.

Cannelloni—that delicious stuffed pasta, literally translated as “big reeds”—is always a sign of a festive occasion in Italy. This baked dish can be made in advance and serve a large group of people, and it is loved by most. What you stuff it with almost does not matter, although a meat-and-vegetable combination is the most common choice. Cannelloni was a big-hit item on menus of Italian American restaurants in the sixties and seventies. If you have a gathering of family and friends, as Italians often do, this is a good dish to make.

Everybody loves meatballs. I think meatballs are an example of Americana and they belong on the American table. This is a great and simple recipe. It calls for three types of meat, but a combination of any two—or even a single meat—will work as well. The recipe makes four dozen meatballs, but you can cut it in half and it will work just as well. The sauce and meatballs freeze well, but are best frozen in smaller quantities (1/2 pint, or six to eight meatballs and sauce) so that they reconstitute quickly.

One would think that meatloaf is very American, but its origins are actually in a German colonial dish of minced pork mixed with cornmeal. Italians serve it a lot as well, and in this rendition the cultures blend deliciously with the addition of a pestata, a paste of carrots, celery, and onions. Not only does the meatloaf taste delicious, but it is foolproof, moist every time. The leftovers reheat as if just cooked, and Italians love to serve it with roasted potato wedges.

This soup has weathered well among the generations of the Italian immigrant families that have cooked it. As I travel through America and look for the flavors and recipes the Italian immigrants brought with them, this recipe is almost always remembered fondly. It is still cooked with nostalgia and reverence, and at holidays, particularly in the homes of immigrants from southern Italy. It is a dish usually served when the whole family is at the table. Even if the “marriage” mostly likely refers to the marriage of the ingredients, the soup is also thought to give strength to a newly married couple for their wedding night.

Everyone traveling to Bologna, Emilia Romagna, is bound to eat ragù Bolognese, ricetta tradizionale and/or ricetta antica. Served with fresh tagliatelle, particularly spinach tagliatelle, it is the precursor to meat sauce as we know it, and still the main Sunday staple at a Bolognese Sunday meal. The ricetta antica, an old recipe, has milk added while the sauce simmers, to give it additional richness and velvety texture. Today it is mostly the tradizionale, without milk, that is cooked in Bologna.

Tortelli are ravioli by another name—a square, filled pasta. And though they vary greatly, like all pastas, tortelli often are filled with fresh ricotta and spinach or other greens, herbs, or vegetables. In Maremma, where carnivorous appetites rule, such a meatless approach is not typical. As you’ll find in this set of recipes, tortelli maremmani have meat inside and outside—and lots of it. Fried chopped chicken livers plump up the tortelli, in addition to ricotta and spinach. Once cooked, the tortelli are dressed with a typical ragù maremmano, made with three chopped meats slowly cooked in tomatoes. My friend Alma likes best boar, chicken, and pork, but here I call for veal, pork, and sausage, because I find that combination comes close to the complexity of the boar. Of course, if you can get boar, by all means use it. This is a great pasta, and worth all the stirring and stuffing. However, it is not necessary to make everything here and put the ingredients together in just one way. The components of tortelli maremmani give many options for delicious meals (and convenient advance preparation). For instance, it’s fine to make the filling and the pasta for the tortelli and leave the ragù for another day. You can sauce your tortelli simply with sage butter, pages 49–50, or just shower them with Tuscan olive oil and Pecorino Toscano. On the other hand, go right to the ragù recipe—skip the tortelli—and make this marvelous sauce to dress any pasta, fresh or dry, or polenta or gnocchi. Indeed, the ragù recipe makes enough for two or more meals. Toss a couple of cups of ragù with spaghetti for a fabulous (and fast) supper one night, and freeze the rest. It will still be perfect whenever you do get a chance to roll and fill those plump tortelli maremmani.

Meatloaf, like chili, is something I make when I have a dozen or so little jars of something-or-other in the fridge that need to be used up. That’s how I came up with pickled jalapeño, which adds a nice kick to this otherwise traditional meatloaf. In this version, a little pork adds extra flavor to the mix. It makes for a delicious and hearty meal, but it’s great for leftovers, too, which can be used to make sandwiches that are as scrumptious as they are out of the ordinary. Peter loves open-face meatloaf sandwiches topped with a fried egg.

Plain ole dirty rice is a good thing. Add the earthy, nutty taste and toothsome texture of wild rice, and you have something even better.

I remember being terribly impressed the first time I was served these at a friend’s house in the early ’80s. At that time, it was exotic and ambitious to attempt Chinese food at home. Times have changed, thanks in large part to the late Barbara Tropp, the famed chef of China Moon Café in San Francisco, whose wonderful books, like The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking, have made cooking authentic Asian food at home much less daunting. These crispy, flavorful little dumplings make a great starter or hors d’oeuvre if you’re feeding a crowd. The filling multiplies easily, and once you get the hang of filling the dumplings, you can whip up a lot in a relatively short period of time. If you’re a vegetarian, leave the pork and shrimp out and add some sautéed shiitake mushrooms instead. The tart dipping sauce is the perfect complement to the rich filling.