Prosciutto

Like the grilled peaches on page 249, these figs can be served as an hors d’oeuvre, as the anchor for a green salad, or as a garnish for roast pork. Because you’re wrapping the prosciutto around the figs, it’s best to use slices from the widest part of the ham. If the prosciutto is smaller, buy two slices per fig and use toothpicks to secure the prosciutto around the figs.

This silky, sophisticated soup is proof that beans can be so much more than humble peasant food. Serve it as a warming first course or main dish. You can use cannellini beans or white navy beans in this soup, but given the choice, I prefer the cannellinis. They’re larger and have comparatively less skin, so they produce a creamier soup.

Because of their tart dressings, salads are not always wine-friendly dishes, but adding cured meat like prosciutto can bridge the divide. Toasted nuts help, too, contributing a buttery note that mellows vinegar’s sharpness. This autumn salad from the winery pairs slender French haricots verts (green beans) with a blend of cool-weather greens and a hazelnut-oil dressing. Follow it with roast chicken or duck.

For a meatless variation, replace the prosciutto with a half cup of grated parmesan and the scallions with a cup of chopped mixed fresh herbs, such as mint, parsley, and tarragon.

If you don’t have time to make the fig jam from scratch, look for a good-quality version at your grocery store. Asiago cheese has a mild, nutty flavor; parmesan cheese can be used in its place.

A STRATA IS A SAVORY BREAD PUDDING with a creamy center and a crusty brown top. It’s a worry-free dish for entertaining: Mix the ingredients, pour them in a pan, and you’re ready to bake. Anything goes in a strata, so use the ingredients listed here as inspiration.

COBB SALAD IS A LUNCHTIME STAPLE, and when a few new ingredients such as crab, crispy prosciutto, and lime-jalapeño dressing are thrown in the mix, the classic just gets better. The Curried Crab Lumps can be made one day in advance and kept in the refrigerator.

CHEDDAR CHEESE AND APPLES are a classic American pairing, and a little prosciutto elevates a simple grilled cheese sandwich to a satisfying midday meal. In this sandwich we use nitrate-free prosciutto, which is available in most specialty stores.

I’ve given an American Southern staple an Italian spin with the addition of Parmesan. The cornmeal makes these biscuits sturdy enough to pack on a picnic, and you can stuff them with smoked salmon (my fave), sliced turkey or ham, or even grilled veggies. Hot out of the oven, they are pretty terrific with just a bit of lemon butter.

This salad is a new twist on the classic combo of melon and prosciutto. Grilled asparagus keeps a slight crunch and also has a smoky char to it that pairs with the creaminess and subtle flavor of mozzarella and the fruitiness of melon. To top it off: crumbled prosciutto. I’ve always loved the salty tang of prosciutto, but since I started baking thin slices of it to make brittle, crispy chips, my love has become a full-blown obsession; they just seem to make everything taste better.

Piadini look a lot like pizzas, but because the crust is made without yeast and does not need to rise, they are much quicker and easier to make. Piadini are also cooked on the grill rather than baked in the oven, which gives them a nice, smoky flavor and crunchy crust. While you can top a piadina with anything you like, including tomato sauce and mozzarella, this sauceless combination is very typical of northern Italy, where piadini are especially popular.

Rome is famous for its artichokes, and in the Jewish district you can buy amazing fried whole artichokes on street corners. Back home, I use frozen artichokes for ease and I love combining them with beans in a creamy dip for bruschetta, a favorite snack throughout Italy. The crispy, salty prosciutto highlights the subtle flavor of the artichokes and adds crunch.

The sweetest, best kind of dates are Medjools. They’re large, so they are easy to fill, meaty, and chewy. Stuffed with goat cheese and wrapped in prosciutto, they provide a perfect sweet-salty mouthful in every bite. Serve these with a crisp white wine as the ideal before-dinner tidbit.

Water-based soups are great, but many soups are indisputably better when made with meat stock. Of course you don’t always have stock, and there are short cuts that produce in-between soups. One of the easiest and most effective ways of making a potent soup quickly and without stock is to start with a small piece of prosciutto or other dry-cured ham. The long aging process this meat undergoes—almost always a year or more—ensures an intense flavor that is quickly transferred to anything in which it is cooked, including water. To save time, chop the vegetables and add them one at a time while you’re rendering the ham; by the time you’re done chopping, you’ll have added all the ingredients except water. And if you bring the water to a boil before you begin chopping, you really minimize cooking time, producing a thick, rich soup in less than thirty minutes. Do not omit the final drizzle of olive oil; its freshness really brings this soup to life.

A pasta dish kids love and one that became traditional with mine whenever we left them with a sitter for the evening. It’s best if the ham is prosciutto, the cream thick and fresh, and the peas just shelled, but it’s pretty good with supermarket ham and cream and frozen peas, and I’ve made it that way plenty of times. For variety, add about a cup of sliced button mushrooms to the ham mixture.

A Roman treat and a fine use for leftover rice (especially risotto). Formally called supplì al telefono because the stringy mozzarella center stretches when you bite through the center and is reminiscent of telephone wires, this is a snack, or a very informal starter. If you use packaged bread crumbs, make sure they’re unseasoned.

Potato croquettes are not served much in Italy, except around Rome. When I first began working in Italian American restaurants, potato croquettes were always paired with a vegetable as a side dish. I grew fond of the dish, I guess, because it combines two things Americans love: mashed potatoes and fried things.

I had this dish at Roberto’s on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. The smokiness of the provola is the defining element that graces the dish.

Veal saltimbocca, which literally translates as “jumps in the mouth,” hails from Rome. It is rather simple, but simplicity is hard to achieve. In the late 1960s, when I worked in Italian restaurants to help pay for my college tuition, veal saltimbocca was always on the menu but never tasted like it did in Rome. The important flavor ingredients here are the prosciutto and the fresh sage. The early immigrants were curing hams into prosciutto at home, which eventually developed into formal businesses, such as the Volpi & Co. in St. Louis, now known as Volpi Foods. In those days, fresh herbs were hard to find—unless you were Italian and grew them at home. By the time I opened Felidia in the 1980s, fresh herbs were coming to the supermarkets, and by the 1990s, Prosciutto di Parma began crossing the ocean, so now the saltimbocca has regained its true flavors. So, unless you use fresh sage, skip it.