Ricotta

Briny olives and sweet green peas have a pleasant synergy that results in a delicious pizza topping.

I’ve tried this pizza with frozen and fresh spinach, and while the former isn’t bad, fresh spinach makes it a delicacy. Complete the meal with one of the smoothies on pages 245 to 246 and a bountiful tossed salad.

A lively accompaniment to simple bean dishes or tortilla specialties.

In my family, we like the unembellished flavor of fresh spinach. I often serve it briefly steamed, with just a touch of nonhydrogenated margarine, which makes a great topping for grains as well as mild pasta dishes like this one.

I used to think of lasagna as quite labor-intensive until no-boil noodles came to the rescue. It’s always a great company or potluck favorite. Now that lasagna is so easy to assemble, you might consider it everyday fare (remember, though, it does take time to bake). This is hearty enough to complete with fresh bread and a big salad.

This upscale quiche is great for company. Read the section on blind-baking the crust a few times before you get started; it’s the trickiest part (but by no means hard). The only special equipment you’ll need is a 10 1/2-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Once you have one of these, you’ll use it for a hundred different things, so it’s a good investment.

This is the old-school lasagna that you find in the Italian restaurants in Brooklyn. Fuggedaboudit! You can assemble the lasagna ahead of time … and it’s great for leftovers.

You can use any dried lasagna noodles in this easy no-boil method, just be sure that the noodles themselves are completely covered with the filling and sauce.

In Calabria, as in other regions of southern Italy, there’s a general preference for dried pasta, even for baked stuffed pastas. Usually, stuffed pastas like canneloni or manicotti are formed from flat pieces of fresh pasta, topped with filling, and then rolled up to make the familiar tube shape. But with this recipe, you stuff pasta for baking as they do it in Calabria, using the dried tubular pasta called paccheri; first cook them just to soften, then spoon in a savory sausage-and-ricotta filling. Fill a big pan with the stuffed paccheri, drape them with tomato sauce and grated cheese, and bake. As with other baked pasta casseroles, you can multiply this recipe many times and make enough schiaffettoni to feed any size crowd. The individual paccheri can be stuffed and the big pan (or pans) fully assembled in advance; bake at the last minute, while your guests are being seated. And best of all, you know everyone will love it.

As the name of this traditional dish suggests, it is made from the few ingredients available to a shepherd in remote pastures. Yet, in my experience, some of the best pasta sauces in Italy come from such a limited larder of ingredients. A fine example is this dressing for rigatoni, created with a bit of sausage, dried grating cheese, fresh ricotta, peperoncino, and fresh basil. And if you toss in other fresh herbs in season, your rigatoni alla pastora will have a slightly different taste each time.

In this dish, the cavatelli are dressed with a sauce of fresh fava beans, always a great treat in season. Another special ingredient here is ricotta salata, or salted ricotta, a marvelous product made from fresh sheep’s-milk ricotta that is pressed, dried, and aged for a few months, until fairly firm, retaining the mild, milky taste of fresh ricotta yet with more complexity. It is a traditional accompaniment to fresh favas—a delicious pairing you will taste here—but ricotta salata is a great final seasoning on many other pastas as well. As I instruct in this recipe, ricotta salata is best grated on top of the pasta just before you serve it. Put a chunk of it on the table with the grater, and let people shower on more ricotta salata as they dig deeper into their bowls.

Life in the hilly inland of Molise was for centuries a pastoral existence, and the traditional staples of the pastoral table are still essential elements in cooking alla Molisana. Ricotta, a nutritious and always available by-product of cheesemaking, thus appears on the table in many forms, such as gnocchi, with pastas and vegetables, and in soups—or eaten just plain, with bread. Here’s one of the most delicious ways that ricotta can be enjoyed: drained, shaped in small pieces, breaded, and fried, ricotta fritta gains new dimensions of texture and flavor. Serve these fried ricotta morsels as a savory appetizer or main course, in a puddle of tomato sauce or on top of braised vegetables. On the other hand, if you top them with some poached peaches or peach preserve or fruit jam with a dollop of whipped cream, you have a glorious dessert.

This wonderful country-style pasta dish requires almost no cooking, but fresh, flavorful ingredients are essential. Most important is to find fresh whole-milk ricotta (not the processed, packaged variety), often sold in good Italian markets and whole-food stores. If you can find artisan-made sheep’s- or goat’s-milk ricotta, that would be best of all. Another key ingredient is dry pasta made from farro, a kind of wheat berry usually cooked as a whole grain (try my Farro with Roasted Pepper Sauce, page 167). Farro pasta is quite popular in Abruzzo and is manufactured there, in many shapes, by both small artisanal pastifici (pasta factories) and the big pasta companies. Look for it in your market, or order it online (see Sources, page 387); either ziti or spaghetti would be my choice for this dish. It is delicious, nutritious, and moderately priced. You’ll also need tender rucola (arugula), good grated pecorino, and excellent extra-virgin olive oil. Once you have all your ingredients, the preparation is fast and easy.

Most of you have made meatloaf on occasion; you may even have a family-favorite recipe that you make frequently. Well, I want to introduce you to the Marchegiano style of meatloaf, with ricotta added to the mix, which renders the loaf tender and tasty—not heavy and dense, as they so often are. Another textural delight in this loaf are cubes of mozzarella, oozing and moist when the meatloaf is served hot and fresh from the oven. However, if you plan on having extra meatloaf to enjoy the next day—I think it is almost better that way—omit the mozzarella, because the cubes harden and won’t melt again. In this case, use an additional cup of ricotta in the loaf mix.

This uncooked dressing, enriched with ricotta and butter, is delicious and quite different from the herb-based pestos I’ve found in other regions. You can blend it together in a bowl while the pasta water is heating up and have a distinctive pasta appetizer or main course in minutes. To retain its vibrant, fresh flavors, it is important not to cook the pesto, just toss it with the tagliatelle and serve.

Tortellini are probably the best-known and most popular of the many forms of filled pasta for which Emilia-Romagna is famous. Although they are made all over the region, tortellini are the special pride of Bologna, where, according to food historians, they were first created centuries ago. When I visited the great artisanal pasta-makers Renata Venturi and her daughters, Daniela and Monica, whom I mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, they showed me their techniques of hand-rolling and shaping tortellini in their marvelous pasta shop, Le Sfogline. Though tortellini are sold (usually frozen) in most markets in the United States, the recipe here will give you a big batch of fresh homemade tortellini, far superior to anything you can buy at the store. And you will see how easy and enjoyable the shaping is, especially the final twist that gives each piece its distinctive shape. Although meat-filled tortellini might come to mind first, I love this ricotta version, dressed with a simple tomato sauce, such as my Marinara Sauce (page 384). A more complex sauce, such as Ragù alla Bolognese (page 382) or mushroom guazzetto, would also be delicious, as would a simple dressing of sage and butter. (If you want to try other pasta shapes than tortellini, you can make tortelli or tortellacci with this ricotta-fontina filling.)

Here’s a beautiful and special dessert: ivory canederli, sitting in a crimson pool of fresh strawberry sauce. Whereas the savory Canederli al Cumino (page 9) are fried, these delicate morsels are poached and have a very light texture. They are formed from a dough of ricotta, eggs, and flour instead of reconstituted bread. These are best when cooked just before you serve them (although the sauce can be made ahead), and in the recipe I give you a sequence of steps to streamline the procedure. Cook the strawberry sauce first, if you haven’t already, then proceed to make the canederli. Follow my instructions for poaching them—it’s important to cook them all the way through—and you’ll have perfect canederli in minutes. Once your guests taste them, I know they will tell you that this dessert was worth waiting for.