Recipes:

Cavatelli with Nutmeg-Scented Ricotta, Thyme, and Pecorino
Homemade Ricotta, New and Improved

Ricotta is one of the loveliest tastes in all Italian food, but when you add a few scrapings of nutmeg to it, it becomes sublime. My mother used this sweet-smelling mix to fill lasagna, big shells, and, best of all, slim crespelle that she’d bake with a topping of Pecorino until they were crisp-edged but still fluffy within. I could eat a ton of them. If you add a little sugar to nutmeg-scented ricotta, you’ve created the filling for cannoli, one of the genius desserts of Southern Italy. For Christmas Eve I often make a ricotta cheesecake seasoned with nutmeg and sometimes lemon or orange flower water, so this mix of flavors really is the aroma of the holidays for me. I also love ricotta in an unstructured state, eating a bowl of it simply drizzled with honey (great with a glass of vin santo), or, if I’m in a more savory mood, with herbs and chopped olives or sundried tomatoes scattered over the top. That’s the beauty of the thing. It can go either way.

Nutmeg-scented ricotta has the essence of sweetness without actually being sweet. That’s because nutmeg is such a soft and gentle spice. I love to just take a whiff of it every so often, even when I have no plans to cook with it. I’ll scrape once or twice at a nutmeg seed just to release its soothing warmth and breathe it in. It can seem to help clarify my culinary thoughts when they’re in a jumble. Scraping nutmeg into a bowl of ricotta has a ritualistic feel for me, since the two are such a time-honored Italian marriage of flavors. And the most familiar combinations are often what inspire me to create.

My absolute favorite use for this mixture is as a pasta sauce. I’ll mix the ricotta and a few scrapings of nutmeg together in a large bowl. Add a little salt and black pepper, maybe parsley or basil and a quick grating of Parmigiano, and then drain the pasta, leaving some water clinging to it, add it to the bowl, and toss gently. The pasta-cooking water blends with the ricotta to warm it and create a creamy, rich sauce that envelopes the pasta in luxury. I make versions of this often when I’m home alone or if I’ve come in late and starving, since the whole dish takes about ten minutes. Everybody loves it-kids, dogs, cats.

You don’t want to add too much nutmeg to your ricotta; that can make it a little bitter. A few generous scrapings are all you need to achieve the subtle warmth you want. My friend John Colapinto once invited me for over for a lasagna dinner. I thought that sounded pretty good, and he doesn’t do much cooking, so this was kind of a big occasion for him. He had followed a lovely recipe, I believe by Marcella Hazan, but instead of adding 1/8 teaspoon of nutmeg to the ricotta filling, he thinks he added 1/8 cup. It was quite a strange evening, everyone becoming lethargic and withdrawn after dinner. Nutmeg can be a narcotic in large doses, and in really large doses even a bit on the poisonous side. You’d have to eat a ton of it to get ill, but as the evening wore on we all became sweaty and nauseated. So maybe his nutmeg-laced lasagna approached the tipping point. But used in the right quantity the spice is wonderfully uplifting.

Cavatelli with Nutmeg-Scented Ricotta, Thyme, and Pecorino

(Serves 6 as a first course)

Salt
1 pound cavatelli pasta
1 cup whole-milk ricotta
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 cup freshly grated Pecorino Toscano cheese
4 large thyme sprigs, the leaves chopped
A handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped
8 big scrapings of nutmeg
Coarsely ground black pepper

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add a generous amount of salt, and drop in the cavatelli.

In a large, warmed serving bowl, add all the other ingredients, and give everything a good mix.

When the cavatelli is al dente, drain, leaving some water clinging to it and saving about 1/2 cup of the pasta-cooking water. Add the cavatelli to the bowl and toss, adding a bit of the reserved cooking water if necessary to make it creamy. Taste and adjust the seasoning, adding more salt, coarse pepper, and/or another scraping or so of nutmeg. Serve hot.

Homemade Ricotta, New and Improved

In my book The Flavors of Southern Italy I have a recipe for homemade ricotta using lemon juice (a pretty standard recipe). The results are good but sometimes a little drier than I like. Since I wrote it I’ve been playing around with it and have decided that adding buttermilk instead of lemon as the curdling agent gives moister results. I’ve even gone ahead and added a little heavy cream, so the ricotta is extra rich and soft.

(Makes about 4 cups)

1 gallon whole milk
1 pint heavy cream
1 quart buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar

Put all the ingredients in a large pot and put it on medium heat. Let it heat, uncovered, stirring once or twice, until little bubbles form on the surface. This will take about 8 to 10 minutes. Then let it bubble for about 5 minutes. You’ll see curds start to form. The temperature should get up to 170 to 175 degrees (a thermometer is helpful). Turn off the heat, and let the pot sit there, undisturbed, for 10 minutes. Now gently pour the ricotta into a strainer lined with cheesecloth, gently scraping the bottom of the pan to loosen any stuck-on ricotta. Let it drain until all the whey runs off but the cheese is still moist.

I love eating it still warm, but the ricotta will keep in the refrigerator for several days.

My Birthday Menu 2005

Recipes:

Escarole Salad with Buffalo Mozzarella Bruschetta and Anchovy Vinaigrette
Spaghetti with Big Shrimp, Tarragon, and Lemon

Wine: Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo, Valentini

I know several people who have birthdays in early to mid-December, including me and my idol Maria Callas. It’s a good time for a birthday. Things are just starting to get festive, and Manhattan, where I live, is decorated in sparkly junk, but it’s not close enough to Christmas to get you gypped out of receiving two distinct gifts or great dinners.

My birthday falls on December 3, and a few weeks before it this year I started thinking about what I’d like my special birthday dinner to be. I had no trouble zeroing in on the flavors I most love-pasta and seafood, preferably mixed together.

Any type of pasta with just about any seafood is my all-time favorite thing to eat. I love just about every combination I’ve either made myself or been served. The spaghetti with sea urchins, tomato, and mint I had years ago in Palermo was one of the most delicious tastes ever and was completely unfamiliar to me at the time. I love all forms of pasta with sardines, from the elaborately flavored Sicilian classic with saffron, fennel, pine nuts, and raisins to the simpler versions made with tomato and a hint of oregano. Penne with tuna and capers is a sublime combination, and is something I also first tasted in Sicily. I’ve duplicated it back home many times using the floral, salt-packed Sicilian capers I can now find at many Italian food shops (and also at buonitalia.com). I love the trenette with lobster and brandy I often make for Christmas Eve dinner, a dish patterned after one my grandfather devised, rich without cream or butter, just bathed in great olive oil, shallots, and a touch of tomato.

Grilled calamari cut into rings with scissors and dropped into a bowl of rigatoni tossed with raw tomatoes and arugula is my new favorite summer pasta. Also I love any type of pasta with clams, with or without tomatoes, with sweet wine, with dry wine, or with lemon juice. I make it with a handful of gentle herbs like basil and parsley, or with fresh chilies and a stronger herb like marjoram or thyme. Bucatini with mussels and pancetta, tossed with a sprinkling of crisp breadcrumbs, is to me one of the most perfectly balanced pastas, briny but meaty; I sometimes add a touch of sugar to the breadcrumbs just to add another dimension to the dish. Spaghetti with anchovies and garlic makes for another intense pasta experience, especially when prepared with salt-packed anchovies mashed with fresh summer garlic; I can eat it until my mouth is stinging from salt overload. Fusilli with squid and spring peas is a recipe I found in the Da Fiore Venetian restaurant’s cookbook. It sounds commonplace enough except that their version is flavored with cinnamon, thyme, pancetta, and Parmigiano, making the dish sweet and nuanced (the sweet cinnamon underscores the sweetness of the squid in an unexpected way, so the dish actually tastes quite exotic). Great olive oil is the secret to all these dishes. Not only does it add great flavor, but it’s a carrier of flavor, distributing gentle sea notes, garlic, herbs, and wine throughout the dish, wrapping these essences around each piece of pasta, making the entire platter glisten.

Shrimp with pasta can be especially sublime because I use the shrimp shells to fashion a little broth that coats the pasta with sweet shrimp flavor. Citarella, in New York City, sells really humongous shrimp. I always grill them in their shells during the summer, but they’re incredible tangled up with spaghetti or bucatini too. I take extra care when I cook pasta with seafood, making it the best it can be by tossing the pasta and seafood together in the skillet over heat for a minute or so to blend all the flavors and envelope the pasta with flavor. And I really watch the cooking time, so I don’t hammer any of the seafood (which is easy enough to do after a few glasses of wine). I also try to use Latini brand artisanal pasta, with its rough, matte surface and light, porous texture that allows sauce not only to cling to it but also to soak in just a bit, producing a rounded flavor (see my product review of Latini for a fuller discussion of this great pasta and information on where to buy it).

I devised the following shrimp-and-pasta recipe with my birthday in mind and cooked it for my husband and sister and myself a few days before my birthday. I didn’t feel right cooking on my actual birthday, because that night I wanted to wear my new high heels and hoped to be taken out. And I did have the excellent fortune to be taken to Esca, on West 43rd Street in Manhattan. I figured if I wasn’t going to make my own pasta with seafood I should go to the best place in the city for this potentially perfect food combination. Esca’s chef, David Pasternack, creates pasta-and-seafood dishes in the Southern Italian style that’s so close to my heart, and judging from the taste of his dishes it’s obviously close to his heart too.

I ordered a chitarra pasta with a creamy sea urchin purée. It was smooth and rich, with that sweet but bitter sea urchin taste I love so much (much different from the sea urchin pasta I ate in Sicily, which had whole chunks of roe, tomato, and wine). My husband had spaghetti with a perfectly cooked whole, hacked up lobster in a spicy, minty tomato sauce. Chef Pasternack cooks pasta just the way I like it; very al dente (so important when tossed with sea things, which can be quite soft in texture). I’m pretty sure he uses Latini pasta. I can tell by the roughed-up, clingy surface and the wheaty taste. We then went on to split a whole grouper bathed in olive oil, marjoram, and blood orange, although both of us were quite full already (but you’ve got to order a secondo for a special dinner). We finished with an incredibly light gelato in hazelnut and spiced orange, with “Happy Birthday” written in beautiful Catholic-school script in dark chocolate around the rim of the plate. What a wonderful birthday meal.

A strange side note about Esca: I’ve eaten in this restaurant only maybe once a year since it opened four years ago (it’s definitely in the class of special-occasion places for me), but every time I’ve been there Woody Allen has also been there. Strange. Does he eat there every night? I wonder. His birthday is December 1. Maybe he goes every year for his birthday too.

Escarole Salad with Buffalo Mozzarella Bruschetta and Anchovy Vinaigrette

Ever since I first saw Vittorio De Sica’s great movie The Bicycle Thief, when I was a teenager, I have found toasted bread dripping with warm mozzarella to be one of the ultimate luxuries (as it was for Antonio and his son; they were celebrating Antonio’s getting a job with this lunch at the fateful moment when the bike was stolen).

(Serves 4 as a first course)

1 medium head escarole, torn into pieces
1 small garlic clove
2 oil-packed anchovy fillets
The juice from half a lemon
Freshly ground black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 ball buffalo mozzarella, cut into slices
8 slices good Italian bread
Salt
A few marjoram sprigs, the leaves chopped

Set out four salad plates. Place the escarole in a salad bowl. With a mortar and pestle grind the garlic with the anchovies until you have a paste. Add the lemon juice, about 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and a few turns of black pepper, and mix everything well.

Place the bread on a sheet pan and broil until golden. Turn the slices, brush them with olive oil, and lay a slice of mozzarella on each slice. Broil until the cheese is soft and bubbly.

Divide up the escarole onto four plates, and place two bruschettas on each plate alongside it. Sprinkle lightly with salt, and scatter on the marjoram. Serve right away.

Spaghetti with Big Shrimp, Tarragon, and Lemon

Shrimp and tarragon make a wonderful coupling, but it’s one not often used in Italy. Fennel and anise are favored there; tarragon has a similar and in my opinion suaver taste.

(Serves 4 as a main course or 6 as a first course)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 pounds jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined (saving the shrimp shells)
1/4 cup dry white wine
Salt
1 pound spaghetti, preferably Latini brand
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
4 plum tomatoes, seeded, and cut into small dice
Freshly ground black pepper
The grated zest from 1 lemon
8 large tarragon sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped
12 large flat-leaf parsley sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped

In a medium-size saucepan, heat the butter over medium flame. Add the shrimp shells, and sauté until they turn pink, about 2 minutes. Add the white wine, and let it reduce by half. Add enough water to just cover the shells. Add a pinch of salt, and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Strain into a small bowl, and set aside (you should have about 1/2 cup).

Set up a large pot of pasta-cooking water, and bring it to a boil. Add a generous amount of salt. Drop in the spaghetti.

In a skillet large enough to hold all the spaghetti and shrimp, heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil over high heat. When the skillet is hot, add the shrimp, the garlic, the lemon zest, and about half the tarragon. Season with salt and black pepper, and sauté quickly, just until the shrimp is tender, about 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes, and sauté about a minute longer. Add the shrimp broth, and simmer for a few seconds, just to blend the flavors.

When the bucatini is al dente, drain it and add it to the skillet. Turn the heat to medium, and toss everything together until the bucatini is well-coated, about a minute. Add the rest of the tarragon and all the parsley, and toss again. Turn off the heat. Taste for seasoning, adding a little more salt if needed. Add a drizzle of fresh olive oil, and give everything a final toss. Pour the pasta into a large serving bowl. Serve right away.

Recipes:

Black Olives with Chilies and Cognac
Almonds with Rosemary, Salt, and Sugar
Fennel Baked with Parmigiano and Moscato
Carrots with Marsala and Capers
Pear, Pancetta, and Fennel Stuffing
Endive and Watercress Salad with Pomegranate Seeds

When I was a kid my grandmother always made Thanksgiving dinner into a very complicated affair. Like most Italian-Americans she felt obligated to work homeland dishes like ravioli, lasagne, or stuffed artichokes into the day, out of a subconscious need to inject it with an alternate patriotism, I think. And I still in 2005 feel a strong desire to include garlic, Parmigiano, and olive oil in my Thanksgiving meal, more for spunk than for patriotism.

But this desire skipped a generation in my family. Once Nanni was too old to remember what Thanksgiving was, my mother was working full time and not interested in taking over the duty of turning out such a huge, confused meal (she liked to cook, but not when she had no choice). In fact we’d often get Thanksgiving food “delivered”-actually brought home by my father-from the country club where he worked as a golf pro. Strangely this was more exciting than depressing for me as a kid. It seems like a hip catered party. It was kind of weird not having the smell of roasting turkey fill the house yet still having a turkey big enough for 12 with all the usual American accompaniments laid out on our table like a Good Housekeeping photo shoot.

Nonetheless my grandmother’s gatherings are the ones I remember best, mainly for their abbondanza. Unfortunately when most families add a lot of Italian stuff to the mix they do so without leaving out any of the traditional American dishes, and they wind up with two gigantic meals that taste terrible together. My grandmother served Waldorf salad on the same plate as sausage-stuffed artichokes. Even when I was nine I knew this was somehow not correct. My solution now is to Italianize traditional American dishes and not add any other ones (what a genius!). I guess I view Thanksgiving partly as another excellent opportunity to get together with friends and available family and have a big Italian meal.

What I usually do is pick a few key flavors and then build the menu around them. Limiting my flavor options really helps me produce a meal with harmony, one that doesn’t cause palate fatigue. This year I’m going with rosemary, fennel, garlic, and a hint of hot chilies, working them into my turkey and stuffing preparations and into appetizers and vegetables as well (not every flavor in every dish, but picking and choosing). Since blandness is often my complaint about American Thanksgiving food, I think it’s important to add unexpected flavors. People tend to think they don’t want unexpected flavors at Thanksgiving; they like the familiar ones. But I really feel the need to break out, adding more crunch, less mushiness to the dinner, and a little spiciness.

I’ve decided to open the meal with black olives flavored with hot chilies, and almonds flavored with rosemary and a little sugar; little bites, good with a glass of dry rosé wine, I’m thinking. After that there will be turkey stuffed with garlic, rosemary, and lemons, and lots of vegetables, probably including something with a touch of bitterness such as broccoli rabe seasoned with more garlic and a sprinkling of fennel seeds and chili flakes, or baked fennel topped with a good grating cheese (Parmigiano or a mild Pecorino), or carrots sautéed with capers, which I love with turkey.

I’m a sucker for Beaujolais Nouveau and I love drinking it on Thanksgiving, since it seems so celebratory (and I, unlike most winos, believe it goes very well with turkey), but I do realize that everyone else disdains it, so I usually offer Chianti too (which goes great with rosemary and garlic). I always serve a salad after the turkey, and I hear everyone saying, ‘Oh, no, no more food’, but then they always dig into it and really appreciate it, realizing what a good palate cleanser and waker-upper it is. This year I’m serving a salad loaded with pomegranate seeds, very festive, a little sour, but nice and crunchy.

One thing I’ve discovered is that usually nobody is much interested in cheese after all this, so I’ve gradually dropped that course from the menu. Personally I’m happiest with pears and young Pecorino, or fresh figs and gorgonzola, or apples and fontina (or all three), instead of a sweet dessert (I like having a sweet wine instead of dessert, a stunt you can pull off only if you don’t have any children coming for dinner). Maybe I’ll try the cheese course again this year and see how it goes over.

Here are a few of the Italian flavor-infused dishes I’ll be serving this year.

Buon giorno del Ringraziamento!

Black Olives with Chilies and Cognac

(Serves 6 as an appetizer)

2 cups mixed olives, black, dark-brown, and/or purple
Extra-virgin olive oil
A few garlic cloves, peeled
A few thin strips of orange peel
1 fresh red chili, thinly sliced
A generous splash of cognac or brandy
The leaves from a few thyme sprigs

Drain the olives-I like to toss together the little Niçoise type, Italian Gaetas, and the big black Cerignolo olives from Puglia, a nice play of sweet and pungent-to remove excess oil or brine. In a large sauté pan, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic, orange peel, and chili. Red jalapeno provides the perfect amount of heat for this dish (seed the chili for less kick, if you like). Sauté for a minute to release these flavors. Add the olives, shaking them around in the pan until they’re warmed through, about 2 minutes. Add the cognac and thyme, and let everything bubble for a few seconds. Pour the olives, with all the pan juices, into a serving bowl. Serve warm or at room temperature (warm is really nice if you can fit it into your schedule).

Almonds with Rosemary, Salt, and Sugar

(Serves 6 as an appetizer)

Extra-virgin olive oil
2 1/2 cups whole almonds, blanched
The chopped leaves from 5 rosemary sprigs
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon sugar

Turn the flame under a large sauté pan to medium. When the pan is hot, add a tablespoon of olive oil. Add the almonds, rosemary, salt (sea salt, if you have it), pepper, and sugar. Shake the pan around to coat the almonds with all the flavorings and keep it on the heat until the almonds are very lightly golden and fragrant, about 3 or 4 minutes. Pour into a large serving bowl, and serve warm or at room temperature.

Fennel Baked with Parmigiano and Moscato

(Serves 6 as a side dish or first course)

Extra-virgin olive oil
4 medium fennel bulbs, trimmed and thinly sliced lengthwise (keep the core intact so the slices hold their shape)
A small palmful of fennel seeds, ground to a powder
A few large thyme sprigs, the leaves chopped
Salt
Black pepper
1/2 cup Moscato wine (or any sweet white wine, such as a Muscat de Beaumes-de-Venise)
1/2 cup low-salt canned chicken broth, or fresh turkey broth if you have it
A squeeze of lemon juice
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Coat a large baking dish with olive oil. Place the fennel slices in the dish in a slightly overlapping fashion. Season with the fennel seed and the thyme, salt, and black pepper, and drizzle with olive oil. Pour the Moscato over the top and then squeeze on some fresh lemon juice. Cover with aluminum foil and bake in the oven until tender, about 40 minutes (a knife poked into one of the pieces should go in easily). Take the pan from the oven and sprinkle on the grated Parmigiano. Bake uncovered for another 10 minutes or so, just until the top is lightly browned. Serve warm.

Carrots with Marsala and Capers

(Serves 6 as a side dish)

Extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 garlic clove, peeled and lightly crushed
2 bunches of carrots, peeled and cut into not-too-thin rounds
1 teaspoon sugar
Salt
1/2 cup dry Marsala
Freshly ground black pepper
A large palmful of salt-packed capers, soaked in cool water for 20 minutes, rinsed, and drained
A few large sprigs of flat leaf parsley, the leaves lightly chopped

In a large sauté pan heat a tablespoon of olive oil and the butter over medium heat. When it is hot and foamy, add the garlic and the carrots. Add the sugar, and a generous pinch of salt, and sauté until the carrots are lightly caramelized, about 3 minutes. Add the Marsala and let it bubble for a minute. Add a big splash of warm water and cover the pan. Turn the heat down to medium low, and simmer until the carrots are just about tender, about 6 minutes (check the pan a few times during cooking to make sure there’s still a little liquid in it; if it gets dry, add a splash of water). Uncover the pan, and let it simmer about a minute longer, just until most of the liquid is evaporated and there’s a light glaze on the carrots. Add the capers, and stir them into the carrots. Season with fresh black pepper and, if needed, a pinch more salt. Add a drizzle of fresh olive oil and the parsley. Serve warm.

Pear, Pancetta, and Fennel Stuffing

(Serves 6)

4 cups cubed day-old bread
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 1/8-inch-thick slices of pancetta, cut into small dice
3 shallots, cut into small dice
2 fennel bulbs, trimmed and cut into medium dice
3 firm pears, unpeeled, cored and cut into medium dice
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
10 large thyme sprigs, the leaves chopped
5 small rosemary sprigs, the leaves chopped
A big splash of Calvados or cognac
1/4 cup dry Marsala
2 cups low-salt canned chicken broth or turkey broth

Lay the bread cubes out on sheet pans and let them dry out overnight (if you don’t have time for this, put the pans in a low oven until the bread has dried through).

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Rub a large baking dish (or two, if needed) with olive oil, and place the bread cubes in it (or them).

In a large skillet heat about 3 tablespoons of olive oil and the butter over medium flame. Add the pancetta, and sauté until it’s crisp, about 4 minutes. Add the shallot and fennel, and sauté until the fennel is tender, about 5 minutes longer. Add the pears, and season with salt, black pepper, and nutmeg. Add the thyme and rosemary, and sauté until the pears are tender but still firm enough to hold their shape, about 4 minutes. Add the Calvados or cognac, and let it bubble a few seconds. Add the Marsala, and let it bubble a few seconds longer. Add a cup of the chicken or turkey broth, and let everything simmer for about 4 minutes, just to blend all the flavors. Pour the fennel and pear mix, with all the skillet juices, over the bread cubes, and give everything a good mixing (which is easiest to do this with your fingers). The bread cubes should be moist but not runny. If they seem dry, add a little more of the broth. Taste for seasoning, and add more salt, black pepper, or fresh herbs, if needed. Drizzle with a generous amount of fresh olive oil and bake, uncovered, for 40 minutes.

Endive and Watercress Salad with Pomegranate Seeds

(Serves 6 as a palate cleanser between the turkey course and cheese or dessert)

2 large endives, pulled apart into separate leaves
2 bunches watercress, well-stemmed
1 shallot, thinly sliced
The seeds from 1/2 small pomegranate
1 teaspoon Spanish sherry vinegar
A pinch of sugar
A few gratings of nutmeg
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Place the endive leaves in a large salad bowl. Add the watercress, shallot, and pomegranate seeds. In a small bowl whisk together the vinegar, sugar, nutmeg, and olive oil. Pour the mixture over the salad. Toss gently and serve.

Recipes:

Pear and Fennel Salad with Asiago and Marsala Vinaigrette
Warm Cerignolo Olive Salad with Celery Leaves
Red Grape and Arugula Salad with Fennel Seeds and Ricotta Salata

My desire to create fusion cooking usually goes just as far as blending flavors from Sicily with those of Puglia or Campania. Not much of a leap. I don’t often venture outside my world of flavors; I just keep reinventing with the tastes that mean the most to me. My flavors are what anyone would categorize as classically Southern Italian, no messing around: Extra-virgin olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, capers, oranges, lemons, anchovies, sweet and hot chiles, black pepper, fennel, saffron, sea salt, all manner of seafood, salami, nutmeg and cinnamon, pancetta, Pecorino and caciocavallo, ricotta and mozzarella, basil and mint, parsley, oregano, marjoram, bay leaves, rosemary, raisins, pine nuts, pistachios, almonds, wine and vinegar, and honey. I think reining in your choices can do wonders for creativity, but even so this basket of tastes from Southern Italy is a lot to work with, really a lifetime’s worth of possible culinary improvisations. Except that now and again I’m tempted to add something new.

Living in Manhattan has steered my cooking along paths that would have made my grandmother utter her derogatory “That tastes different.” She’d say that whenever I cooked for her, since my manicotti or ragu sauce didn’t taste exactly like hers, and it apparently had to to be proper. Her kitchen was a rigid little world, though she did occasionally make German food, since my grandfather loved it and it represented some kind of culinary chic at the time. But now in present-day Manhattan I step into a new world of flavors any time I take a seat in an Indian, Mexican, Provençal, or Vietnamese restaurant (it’s actually pretty hard to find German places these days). As a result I find myself more and more adding foreign perfumes to my Southern Italian cooking, with tarragon, thyme, ginger, cardamom, lavender, star anise, and poblano and aleppo chiles among the tastes I love. I also love lime, a citrus strangely absent from much of Southern Italian cooking, a cuisine otherwise heavy with citrus. Coriander and cardamom seeds fit nicely into many of my time-honored Southern Italian classics. I love to add a sprinkling of ground coriander to chicken with lemon and garlic. Fried eggplant sprinkled with garlic, vinegar, and hot chiles is a Calabrian classic; with the addition of ground coriander seed it becomes for me more rounded in flavor and richer (I usually finish the dish with a scattering of chopped mint). I’ve also been adding a sprinkling of ground coriander seed to my grilled leg of lamb seasoned with rosemary and garlic; the coriander seems to sweeten it, and the same goes for lamb stew. Star anise, in place of the more customary fennel or anise seed, is incredibly delicious worked into a pasta tossed with a shrimp or lobster sauce, especially when finished with a squirt of lime juice. Roasted cumin seeds tossed with black olives make a delicious appetizer (I also make this with the more traditional fennel seeds). I love lavender sprigs and honey drizzled over young Pecorino. Tarragon has become my favorite herb for raw tomatoes, even surpassing basil this summer. The aroma of cardamom pods transports me to a more exotic culinary world than I usually encounter in my own kitchen, and I’ve been looking for ways to work them into a few Southern Italian dishes in a natural way. My father’s peaches soaked in white wine, as wonderful as they are in their pure state, I find even more lovely with a few crushed cardamom pods floating around in the bowl. I sometimes add a few scrapings of fresh ginger to a tomato sauce (very nice when used as a simmering sauce for pork chops), and I may also include a bit of fresh Thai chile and a handful of basil and toss the sauce with spaghetti.

When I introduce new flavors into my cooking I always have tugging at me the solid traditions of Southern Italy. I view this as a good thing, not only because I love those flavors but also because the tugging keeps me in check, preventing me from concocting an Indian eggplant parmigiano or a Tex-Mex ragu. And I’m very grateful for that.

* * *I love composed salads that contain fruit, vegetables, or cheese, or bits of all these things. They’re a nice change from my usual lettuce-only salads and a good excuse to use fall produce. It’s exciting to liven things up with apples, pears, grapes, fennel, celery, leeks, beets, and shallots. Not to create big meal-in-a-trough salads in the kitchen-sink tradition, but just to gently embellish a bowl of lettuce with little hits of flavor. Here are a few recipes that I think have come out well.

They are all from a book I’m now starting work on, provisionally called For the Love of Salads.

Pear and Fennel Salad with Asiago and Marsala Vinaigrette

Every fall at some point I make pears poached in Marsala. This year I didn’t want to poach the beautiful first-of-the-season pears, but I did want to experience them with the flavor of Marsala. I’ve found that if you reduce the wine to a syrup, it makes a good base for a vinaigrette. I like serving this slightly sweet salad after a rich meat like pork or duck.

A ripe pear should have a little give when you press the neck with your fingers but not be so soft that you can easily dent it. Overly ripe pears are good for eating whole, but for a salad you need something that’s still sliceable. I find that keeping the skin on holds the slices together fairly well while tossing. Anjou, Bosc, Comice, or Bartletts are all fine for this salad. Comice are my favorites.

Asiago is a cow’s milk cheese from Northern Italy. It’s a bit more pungent than Parmigiano and a great match for pears (and apples). I used a medium aged one for this salad, but you can also find an Asiago Fresco in the markets, a less aged version that is softer and milder. Either is fine for this recipe.

About cutting pears: They darken quickly when cut, so slice them only when you’re ready to assemble the salad (once they’re tossed with dressing, they’ll keep their bright color longer).

(Serves 4 as a first course)

1 medium head frisée lettuce, cut or torn into pieces
1 medium fennel bulb, cored and very thinly sliced
1 ripe but not soft pear, unpeeled and thinly sliced
3 tablespoons dry Marsala
A pinch of sugar
1 garlic clove, peeled and lightly crushed
1 teaspoon Spanish sherry vinegar
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
A small chunk of Asiago cheese

Set out four salad plates.

Place the frisée, fennel, and pear in a large salad bowl.

Pour the Marsala into a small saucepan. Add the garlic and a pinch of sugar, and bring it to a boil over high heat. Continue to boil until it’s reduced by half, about 3 minutes (it should look a bit syrupy). Let it cool for a few moments. Now add the sherry vinegar, a pinch of salt, and a few grindings of black pepper. Drizzle in about 3 tablespoons of olive oil while giving everything a quick whisk. Pour the vinaigrette over the salad and toss (remove the garlic before you do). Divide the salad up onto the plates and, with a vegetable peeler, shave a few good-size slices of Asiago over each one. Finish each dish with a grinding of fresh pepper. Serve right away.

Warm Cerignolo Olive Salad with Celery Leaves

I think of the huge Cerignolo olives from Puglia, Italy, as really a fruit (which of course they in fact are), since they’re so juicy and mild. They are olives light. Here I use the green ones, sautéing them with garlic and a splash of wine and then scattering them over a simple green salad spiked with lemon zest.

This salad is best served before a main course, as a sort of hors d’oeuvre. You might follow it with fish, but maybe best would be a bowl of pasta with a spicy tomato sauce (I served a version of bucatini all’amatriciana).

(Serves 4 as a first course)

1 large endive, the leaves cut into strips
1 medium head frisée lettuce, torn or cut into pieces
Extra-virgin olive oil
A dozen green Cerignolo olives
Salt
A pinch of sugar
Freshly ground black pepper
1 garlic clove, peeled and lightly crushed
3 tender inner celery stalks, cut into small dice, plus the leaves from 5 stalks, lightly chopped
A splash of white wine
1 teaspoon champagne vinegar
The grated zest from half a lemon

Set out four salad plates.

Place the endive and frisée in a large salad bowl.

In a large skillet, heat a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. Add the olives, a pinch of salt, the sugar, black pepper, the garlic, and the diced celery. Sauté, stirring the olives around occasionally until they smell fragrant and are warmed through, about 4 minutes. Add a splash of white wine and let it bubble for a few seconds. Turn off the heat

Drizzle about 2 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil over the endive and frisée and add the champagne vinegar, the lemon zest, a pinch of salt, and a few grindings of black pepper. Give it all a gentle toss, and divide the salad up onto the four plates. Place about 3 olives on each salad and then drizzle each plate with some skillet liquid and the celery, discarding the garlic. Garnish with the celery leaves. Serve right away.

Red Grape and Arugula Salad with Fennel Seeds and Ricotta Salata

The idea for combining grapes with fennel seeds comes from a schiacciata I make in the fall. Schiacciata is a Italian wine harvest bread that included grapes and often fennel seeds (and sometimes rosemary as well, but I find that version a bit cluttered). This is an enticing marriage of flavors that I was eager to try in a salad. I served this after a meal of grilled sausages with peppers, and I thought all the flavors came together nicely.

(Serves 4 as a first course)

A generous palmful of fennel seeds
A pinch of sugar
Salt
1 large bunch arugula, well stemmed
1 cup seedless red grapes, cut in half (The Red Flame variety is a good choice)
1 medium red shallot, very thinly sliced
A few large sprigs of tarragon, the leaves lightly chopped
1 small chunk ricotta salata, cut into thin sticks
1 teaspoon Banyul or Spanish sherry vinegar
Extra-virgin olive oil
A few gratings of fresh nutmeg
Freshly ground black pepper

Place the fennel seeds in a small sauté pan and turn the heat to low. Add a pinch of sugar and a very tiny pinch of salt and heat slowly, stirring the seeds around frequently so they toast evenly. When they start smelling like fennel, they’re done, in about 3 minutes. Remove the pan from the burner so they don’t get any darker.

In a large salad bowl combine the arugula, grapes, shallot, tarragon, and ricotta salata.

In a small bowl combine a teaspoon of vinegar, 3 tablespoons of olive oil, a few gratings of nutmeg, salt, and black pepper. Whisk briefly. Pour this over the salad and toss gently. Sprinkle on the fennel seeds. Serve.

Recipes:

Bucatini with End-of-Season Tomatoes, Mussels, and Pancetta
Farro Penne with Green Zebra Tomatoes, Marjoram, Almonds, and Ricotta Salata

September is a great month for tomatoes in New York, but it’s also a sad one, because you know it’s all coming to an end soon. Once October rolls in I start hoarding the remaining tomatoes at the markets. I don’t bottle and preserve them; that would seem excessive for a family of two, and it’s really not me anyway, but I do try to cook with them as much as possible during those dwindling tomato days.

My friend Barbara just bought a house in upstate New York. She never had a garden before but now has a big yard, and she wanted to grow vegetables, so I ordered her a bunch of seeds from a company called seedsfromitaly.com. Seedsfromitaly carries all sorts of unusual Italian vegetable and fruit varieties. One of the seed types Barbara started in little paper cups in her Washington Heights apartment was something called Red Pear, a gigantic Northern Italian beefsteak tomato. It sprouted like grass in a few weeks and she eventually transferred it to her upstate plot. She’s now got a zillion of these incredibly huge, heavy, peculiarly pear-shaped tomatoes. They were still completely green at the end of August, and she got a little worried that they’d just go from green to brown and shrivel up and then drop off dead, but now in the first days of September she’s suddenly finding that every morning a few of her hard green tomatoes have turned orange and then deep crimson.

The texture of these beefsteaks is not what I expected. Their insides are dense and sweet, with little runniness and few seeds, like a great sauce tomato, but they are rich and intense just sliced and drizzled with olive oil or, as I prepared them at her house recently, cut into chunks and tossed with steamed corn, red onion, and basil. Every morning she’s got more solid red ones. And now she has enough of these huge things to allay our fears of running out until maybe the end of October.

She has also planted a super-sized variety of the classic San Marzano plum, called Redorta. These are also now huge and fairly obscene-looking but still green in early September. (Maybe she needs to scatter some volcanic ash over the vines? Where would one buy it, I wonder?) Barbara has turned out to be quite the gardener, even though she insists she hasn’t done much more than stare at the plants morning, noon, and night. Maybe that’s the key.

Standing in the middle of her tomato patch in my mud-caked high-heel sandals felt like a scene out of Green Acres, but I needed to get close to the tomato leaves so I could smell their pungent, bitter, spicy aroma. This echoed a childhood memory deeply etched in the olfactory area of my brain (wherever that may be). The leaves of these giant Italian tomatoes seem even sharper smelling and more alluring than the leaves from the lumpy, juice-packed beefsteaks my father grew in his little backyard garden, and since childhood memories always become exaggerated over the years, I assume these Italian tomato leaves must, comparably, really be intense.

It seems to me that transitional times are the most perplexing to cook through. Early fall and early spring in particular throw me off, and I have to work harder to come up with great cooking. I think it’s because during these in-between seasons I’m not completely clear about what I want to eat. What I find myself doing come September is introducing heartier fall-like touches to my tomato dishes. I’ll pair tomatoes with pancetta, with stronger herbs like rosemary and sage, with leeks, with salty cheeses like feta or ricotta salata, and I’ll add pats of butter along with my usual olive oil, just for richness. These dishes usher me through the end of the tomato season and into fall with a lot less heartache.

Bucatini with End-of-Summer Tomatoes, Mussels, and Pancetta

In high summer I would probably flavor this pasta with basil and a few cloves of fresh garlic. But now I’ve used instead rosemary, pancetta, and celery, pushing the dish into the realm of early fall flavor. I see it as a main-course dish.

(Serves 4 as a main course)

6 or 7 end-of-the-summer plum tomatoes, cut into small dice
Salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
3 thin slices pancetta, well chopped
2 shallots, thinly sliced
1 small celery stalk, cut into small dice, plus the leaves, chopped
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 1/2 pounds small mussels, well cleaned
1 pound bucatini pasta
A generous pinch of Aleppo pepper (or a smaller pinch of cayenne)
A splash of cognac or brandy
A larger splash of dry vermouth
A few sprigs of rosemary, the leaves lightly chopped
A large handful of flat-leaf parsley,the leaves lightly chopped

Place the chopped tomatoes in a colander, sprinkle them with salt, and give them a gentle toss. Let them drain for about 20 minutes.

Set up a big pot of pasta-cooking water and bring it to a boil. When it boils add a generous amount of salt.

In a large, wide skillet (or a casserole-type pot), heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add the pancetta and sauté until it’s just starting to crisp. Add the shallots, the celery, with leaves, and the garlic, and sauté a minute longer. Add the mussels, the pepper, the cognac, and the vermouth, and stir everything around a little.

Drop the bucatini into the pot of water.

Add the tomatoes and the rosemary to the mussels and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the mussels open, about 5 minutes.

When the bucatini is al dente, drain well and pour it into a very large serving bowl (big enough to accommodate all the mussel shells). Drizzle with about 2 tablespoons of fresh olive oil and scatter on the parsley. Toss briefly. Pour on the mussel sauce and toss again. Taste for salt. Serve right away.

Farro Penne with Green Zebra Tomatoes, Marjoram, Almonds, and Ricotta Salata

Green zebras, an heirloom variety, have all the qualities of a great summer tomato but with an added touch of sourness that I love with pasta. Here’s another of my pomodoro crudo sauces, which I’ve been living on this summer (they’re so easy and versatile). With the zebras I like to include strong flavors, such as the fresh marjoram and ricotta salata I’ve chosen here. I pair the sauce with hearty farro pasta (you can also use whole-wheat pasta), which really gives the dish a late-summer feel.

(Serves 6 as a first course)

8 green zebra tomatoes, seeded and cut into small dice
Salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 summer garlic cloves, thinly sliced
A few scrapings of nutmeg
A pinch of sugar
A handful of whole, blanched almonds, lightly toasted
5 large sprigs marjoram, the leaves chopped
Freshly ground black pepper
1 pound farro penne pasta (Latini makes a superb one, which you can order from gustiamo.com )
3/4 cup crumbled ricotta salata
A handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves, lightly chopped

Place the tomatoes in a colander, sprinkle with salt, give them a gentle toss, and let them drain for about 30 minutes.

Set up a large pot of pasta-cooking water and bring it to a boil. Add a generous amount of salt. Throw in the farro penne.

In a large serving bowl, add the drained tomatoes, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and the butter, garlic, nutmeg, a pinch of sugar, almonds, and the marjoram. Season with a generous amount of black pepper, and give everything a stir.

When the pasta is al dente, drain well, and add it to the serving bowl. Add the ricotta salata and the parsley and toss. Taste to see if it needs more salt. Serve hot or warm.

Recipe:

Erica and Mo’s Eggplant Parmigiano

I don’t ruminate over my childhood now the way I did when I was in my twenties; that type of self-analysis feels more like a dead end as life goes on. But childhood food memories do pop up all the time. I seem to remember tastes and smells more than I do words and actions; maybe that’s one reason I chose cooking for a career. Lately I’ve been thinking about my mother’s eggplant parmigiano. It was my all-time favorite dish as a kid, her version of an exemplary classic of the Southern Italian kitchen.

She made it exactly the way her father had, as a hybrid Sicilian-Neapolitan version he had come up with. It contained slices of hard-boiled eggs tucked between bread-crumbed, fried eggplant, tomatoes, and mozzarella, and it had a whiff of cinnamon (a Sicilian touch). The egg slices gave the dish its unforgettable lushness. My mother made eggplant parmigiano often, knowing how much we all loved it. The leftovers went into eggplant parmigiano heroes, one of the most sublime hot sandwiches in the world, I believe. When my mother started working full-time, my parents hired a bent-over Italian lady, Rose, to help out around the home. She had advanced diabetes and several amputated toes. Her favorite, and just about only, real chore was Lemon Pledging the furniture. Sad old Rose also had a gas problem, which made my sister and me howl with laughter until she ordered us to get down on our knees and beg god’s forgiveness or else we’d go straight to hell. This scared us, so we did stop laughing, at least for a time.

Rose took over the job of making eggplant parmigiano, putting together three or four baking pans at a time and freezing them so my sister and I could defrost and reheat one when my parents went out to dinner, which was often. Rose’s eggplant wasn’t as good as my mother’s, but she was instructed about the egg slices, so they were good enough. These were favorite evenings for my sister and me. The smell of the eggplant parmigiano heating up in the oven in the warm, parentless house was the smell of preteen freedom.

Eggplant parmigiano was always a winter food in our family. The version I’ve been cooking lately has a more summery feel to it, since I make it with a fresh, quick-seared tomato sauce (my mother made a simmered sauce with canned tomatoes), but I’ve included the eggs and cinnamon that were always present, touches that really made it special. And since it is still the warm part of the year I add fresh basil and marjoram. (I don’t distinctly remember any herb in my mother’s, though there may have been parsley.) Also I’ve decided that egg-dipping and bread-crumbing the eggplant slices is too messy, so I just dust them in seasoned flour. Since I’ve tinkered with the recipe in several small ways, I guess I’d have to say it isn’t really my grandfather’s and mother’s anymore. It is updated, meaning just a tad lighter. So now the recipe belongs to all of us.

Erica and Mo’s Eggplant Parmigiano

(Serves 5)

12 summer plum tomatoes, seeded and cut into small dice
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 summer garlic cloves, thinly sliced
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
5 large marjoram sprigs, the leaves chopped
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 or 4 scrapings fresh nutmeg
A generous pinch of ground cinnamon
3 medium summer eggplants, cut into thin rounds, the ends discarded
A 1-pound ball of mozzarella
2 hard-boiled eggs, thinly sliced
A handful of basil leaves, lightly chopped
3/4 cup grated Pecorino cheese

Place the tomatoes in a colander and sprinkle them with salt. Let them drain for about 30 minutes (ripe summer tomatoes, even the plum varieties, are often very juicy, and you’ll want to get rid of the excess liquid so it doesn’t make your dish watery).

In a wide skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and sauté until very lightly golden. Add the tomatoes, spreading them out, turn the heat to high, season with black pepper, and cook at a lively bubble for 5 minutes. You’ll want to stir the tomatoes only once or twice while cooking to avoid creating too much steam. Turn off the heat and add the marjoram. Taste to see if more salt is needed.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

In a large sauté pan, heat an inch of olive oil over medium heat. While it is heating, pour the flour onto a large plate, mix in the nutmeg and cinnamon, and season with salt and black pepper. Dredge the eggplant slices in the flour on both sides, shaking off excess flour (loose flour can burn on the bottom of the skillet). Test to see if the oil is hot by dipping the edge of one of the eggplant pieces in it. If it sizzles, it’s hot enough. Fry the eggplant in batches, turning them when golden to cook both sides. Add more oil at any time, if needed. The smell of cinnamon-coated eggplant frying in olive oil is kind of amazing. As the pieces are ready, use tongs to transfer them to paper towels to drain.

Spread a thin layer of the tomato sauce in the bottom of an approximately 8-by-11-inch baking dish (or an equivalent oval dish). Add a layer of eggplant, a layer of mozzarella, and a layer of egg slices. Scatter on some of the basil and sprinkle with Pecorino. Pour on another layer of tomato sauce, and then make another layer of eggplant, mozzarella, the rest of the egg and basil, and a sprinkling of Pecorino. Make a final layer using the remaining eggplant. Pour on the remaining tomato sauce and any remaining mozzarella. Sprinkle with Pecorino and grind a little pepper over the top (don’t put any eggs on top. They need to be tucked inside to stay moist).

Bake, uncovered, until bubbling and lightly golden, about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and let stand for about 15 minutes before serving, or serve at room temperature if you like (as it is often served in Naples).

Recipes:

Cantaloupe and Tomato Salad with Black Olives and Tarragon
Cantaloupe Salad with Prosciutto, Frisée, and Basil
Spaghetti with Cantaloupe and Hot Chilies

My grandfather always salted his cantaloupe. As a child I found this weird. It seemed so old-world for an elegantly turned-out man who had in many ways become an urbane New Yorker. When I got a little older and was introduced to prosciutto with melon, I reasoned that his salty cantaloupe was likely a Southern Italian peasant version of this wonderful pairing. There are several dishes like this in the Southern repertoire. One, called pasta che sardi a mari, translating roughly as pasta with the sardines still in the sea, is a cut-rate but delicious vegetarian version of the elaborate Sicilian pasta con le sarde, and it’s a good example of the Southerner’s ability to create elegance from poverty (the pasta includes wild fennel, raisins, pine nuts, and sometimes tomato or cauliflower).

In any case the salt and cantaloupe pairing is an inspired one, the salt heightening the sweetness and fruitiness of the melon, making it taste even more like a cantaloupe than before. In these three recipes I explore that marriage, mixing cantaloupe with other salty and savory touches such as olives, fresh herbs, tomatoes, olive oil, hot chilies, garlic, prosciutto, and of course plain salt. I’ve stopped short of considering anchovies, an ingredient that I tend to use with just about anything but that’s just too fishy to go with a fruit, I think. I do like cantaloupe with shrimp, though. Try adding a handful of cubed cantaloupe to a cool, olive-oil-based shrimp salad. Very refreshing.

Summer herbs are very good additions to cantaloupe. The light, leafy ones seem to mate best with the melon’s sweetness and mild acidity. Tarragon, basil, parsley, and mint are my favorite choices. I’ve also had luck with herb combinations; basil with a touch of tarragon, and parsley with a few mint leaves are both lovely together (and work well with honeydew melon too). I love a touch of hot chili with cantaloupe too. The flavor reminds me a little of Tex-Mex salsas that contain mango, a mix I’ve always found interesting. Tomato with cantaloupe is also a surprisingly excellent duo. I’ve paired these two ingredients in a simple salad and, in a more experimental moment, with spaghetti. But I’ve also kept my Spaghetti with Cantaloupe and Hot Chilies Italian by adding garlic, basil, pine nuts, and good olive oil (resisting the temptation to create some kind of pan-Latin American pasta dish). The spaghetti really tastes wonderful, I think.

Now is the time to find great cantaloupe at your farmers’ market. My way of telling if a cantaloupe is ready to eat is by smelling it. If it smells like a cantaloupe, it’s ripe. If it smells like nothing, pass it by. They do ripen some after you get them home, but they’re best when you buy them fully ripe and juicy.

Cantaloupe and Tomato Salad with Black Olives and Tarragon

Black olives and tarragon make for an exquisite flavor fusion. I use them often in chicken stews, on lamb chops, and with sautéed zucchini, but they also work really well with sweet or acidic ingredients, as I discovered when I included them in this simple salad.

(Serves 4 as a first course)

3 medium summer tomatoes, sliced into thin rounds
1/4 small cantaloupe, seeded, peeled, and sliced
1 small red onion, very thinly sliced
A handful of Niçoise olives
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
A squeeze of fresh lemon juice
Extra-virgin olive oil
A few large sprigs of tarragon, the leaves lightly chopped

On a large salad plate, alternate slices of tomato with cantaloupe. Scatter on the red onion and olives. Sprinkle with salt, and grind on some fresh black pepper. Give everything a tiny squeeze of lemon juice, and then drizzle with good olive oil. Scatter on the tarragon. Serve right away.

Cantaloupe Salad with Prosciutto, Frisée, and Basil

(Serves 4 as a first course)

12 thin slices cantaloupe, peeled and seeded
Salt
1 medium-size head frisée lettuce, washed, dried, and separated into individual leaves
1 red shallot, thinly sliced
8 very thin slices prosciutto di Parma, trimmed of excess fat and cut into strips
A handful of basil leaves
Extra-virgin olive oil
The juice and grated zest from 1/2 small lemon
Freshly ground black pepper

Lay three slices of cantaloupe each on the perimeters of four salad plates, and give them a sprinkling of salt.

Place the frisée, shallot, prosciutto, and basil in a salad bowl. Drizzle with enough olive oil to coat everything lightly (probably a little less than two tablespoons). Add the lemon juice and zest, a tiny pinch of salt (remember that the prosciutto is salty), and a generous amount of fresh black pepper. Toss gently and mound on the salad plates inside the cantaloupe slices. Serve right away.

Spaghetti with Cantaloupe and Hot Chilies

The chili here brings out the sweetness of the cantaloupe, and the tomato adds acidity and juiciness, to make for a really elegant play of flavors. I like to serve this as a palate opener for a summer dinner, maybe followed by a grilled fish.

(Serves 6 as a first course)

4 round medium-size summer tomatoes, seeded and cut into small dice
Salt
1/4 small cantaloupe, seeded and cut into small dice
1 small, fresh hot chili, minced (and seeded if you like less heat)
1 large summer garlic clove, minced
A handful of basil leaves, lightly chopped
A handful of pine nuts, lightly toasted
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound spaghetti

Place the tomatoes in a colander and sprinkle them with salt. Give them a toss and let them drain for about 30 minutes.

Set up a large pot of pasta cooking water and bring it to a boil. Add a generous amount of salt.

In a large serving bowl, add the drained tomatoes, cantaloupe, chili, garlic, basil, and pine nuts. Add 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and season with salt.

Cook the spaghetti al dente, and drain well. Add it to the sauce, and toss well. Taste for seasoning. The salad should have a nice balance among sweet, salt, spice, and acid. Serve right away.

A few years later I began to travel to Italy, so I could smell and taste the country’s food in its original home. Visiting the dry little hill town in Campania where my grandmother was born had a profound effect on me. It deepened my desire to cook. And I kept returning to Southern Italy, visiting Puglia, Basilicata, and Sicily several times. Every visit reconfirmed my love of Southern Italy’s flavors and the bold, open-arms approach of its cooks. Basil, lemons, olives, tomatoes, garlic, almonds, anchovies, fennel, Pecorino cheese, and capers: These were some of the flavors that motivated my cooking. Over the years, as my cooking has evolved, I’ve found myself really zeroing in on the flavors of Southern Italy, while altering them with my New York sensibility to produce a not necessarily traditional but very personal take on Italian cooking. The compulsive aspect of my cooking still exists, but in a more civilized form. It’s not something I dwell on. If I want to cook fifteen recipes a week using red bell peppers, who cares? I’m not hurting anyone, except maybe my own digestion. Motivation, I suppose, is considered by most people to fall into either of two categories: healthy or unhealthy (traveling to Italy to learn about cooking is healthy, if expensive; watching bread rise in your father’s Cadillac at 3 a.m. is not). But ultimately that doesn’t matter. I welcome anything that drives my desire to learn more. I feel lucky to have that desire.

Recipes:

Peppers Roasted with Caciocavallo, Black Olives, and Thyme
Grilled Peppers with Salt-Packed Anchovies and Marjoram
Grilled Peppers with Honey, Almonds, and Rosemary
Couscous with Grilled Peppers, Ginger, Basil, and Merguez Sausage
Wheat Berry Salad with Roasted Peppers, Soppressata, and Parsley

Certain vegetables perplex many American cooks. Not their mere existence, but how to cook them. Eggplant is one, artichoke another. Bell peppers seem to be a third; they look so beautiful, almost too shiny and colorful to even put a thumb print on. Most people I know just slice them up and throw them into a salad. But I’m a cook who doesn’t like bell peppers raw, and I say grill them or roast them. Do anything to rid them of their rawness. In my opinion, if they’ve still got a crunch, they’re not at their best. I’m talking about the red, ripe ones. I really don’t care for green bell peppers, raw or cooked. To me their smell is strangely unfood-like, and their flavor really has legs, traveling all over your plate, spreading its essence. When I eat a green bell pepper I sense I’m burping up something vaguely like gasoline for several hours after. The only sweet green peppers I do like are the long Italian frying ones, like my father used to grow in his backyard garden. He picked them when they were just faintly tinged with specks of red. Then my mother slow-roasted or sautéed them, along with onions and sometimes sausages, until they almost seemed dissolved (a truly Italian-American approach).

The smell of ripe, red bell peppers from the sunny bins of the Greenmarket is rich and sweet. Early August is when they start piling up, so gorgeous you can’t believe they’re not some Chinese lacquered art object. And they come in shiny brown, purple, orange, and sunflower yellow, too, but the classic reds are always the sweetest (the gorgeous purple fades to a mottled pale green when you grill their skins off).

Heat coaxes out their sweetness. After slowly charring off their skins, I like to toss the softened pepper slices with sweet or salty touches and summer herbs. Very traditional Southern Italian additions can include anchovies, garlic, almonds, pine nuts, capers, olives, oregano, marjoram, mint, parsley, or basil. To emphasize the peppers’ sweetness, I avoid adding much acidity in the way of vinegar or wine, but a good olive oil, I feel, is really essential, something not too biting but more on the gentle, fruity side.

My other favorite way with bell peppers is to stuff them and roast them. A dish my mother often made was whole red bell peppers filled with rice and sausage, sometimes with a tiny pasta such as acini in place of the rice. This is a great winter dish, but during summer I prefer to prepare peppers more simply, sometimes omitting the starch element altogether and filling them with pure flavor, a nice melting cheese like caciocavallo, a handful of olives, and fresh herbs. Peppers done that way taste best slightly warm, not piping hot.

Here are a few bell pepper recipes I’ve made recently. I hope they’ll be a welcome addition to your summer repertoire. Also take a look at my Spaghetti with Roasted Pepper and Basil Purée, from Fall 2004, for an easy pasta that can be served hot or at room temperature.

Peppers Roasted with Caciocavallo, Black Olives, and Thyme

Here’s a stuffed pepper recipe that contains no starchy filler but just a mingling of strong flavors. Since those flavors are so rich, I roast the peppers halved and serve them as a first course or as part of an antipasto. I’ve chosen to include caciocavallo, one of Southern Italy’s great melting cheeses, but you can substitute a fresh goat cheese or feta if you like.

(Serves 6 or 7)

4 ripe red bell peppers, cut in half lengthwise right through the stems, if possible (this helps the peppers hold their shape)
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
3/4 pound caciocavallo cheese, cut into small cubes
2 plum tomatoes, seeded and cut into small dice
A handful of Gaeta olives, pitted and roughly chopped
1 large summer garlic clove, minced
A splash of cognac or brandy
6 large thyme sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped
Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 425.

Coat the pepper halves all over with olive oil, and place them, cut side up, on a baking sheet. Sprinkle them with salt, and roast them until they’ve just started to soften and become fragrant, about 20 minutes. Take them from the oven, and let them cool for a few minutes (if there is liquid in the peppers, dump it out).

Meanwhile, in a medium bowl, combine the caciocavallo, tomato, olives, garlic, cognac or brandy, thyme, and a few grindings of black pepper. Add a pinch of salt and drizzle in a tablespoon of olive oil. Toss gently. Fill the peppers loosely with the cheese mixture and place them back in the oven to roast until the cheese is melted and all the flavors have mingled, about 10 minutes longer. Serve warm.

Grilled Peppers with Salt-Packed Anchovies and Marjoram

What makes these special is the Sicilian salt-packed anchovies. Once they’re desalted, they’re almost like fresh fish, but with a flavor all their own. Flott is a good brand that is fairly easy to find in this country.

(Serves 6 as an antipasto dish)

5 ripe red bell peppers
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 large summer garlic clove, thinly sliced
5 sprigs fresh marjoram, the leaves lightly chopped
A pinch of sugar
3 salt-packed anchovies, filleted and soaked in cool water for about 10 minutes, then drained well and chopped into tiny bits.
A small splash of dry white wine

Place the peppers on a baking sheet, and broil them about 6 inches from the heat source. When they become black and charred, start turning them, charring them all around. You can also char them on an outdoor grill (a stove flame doesn’t really work well; it blackens the peppers before they have a chance to cook through and become tender and sweet). When the peppers are thoroughly charred, let them sit in a covered bowl for about 10 minutes so they can steam (this makes them easier to peel). Now peel and seed them (try to do this without running them under water, since water will wash away some of their sweet juices). Cut them into thick slices, and place them in a shallow serving bowl. Drizzle on about 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and give them a toss. Add the garlic, marjoram, a pinch of sugar, the anchovies, and the white wine (very little wine, about a teaspoon only, just to add a gentle acidity). Toss again, and let them sit for about 30 minutes before serving, so they can develop flavor.

Grilled Peppers with Honey, Almonds, and Rosemary

This grilled pepper dish concentrates on sweet and warm flavors, not the more sharp, salty, and bold ones that are more usual. Sometimes I like to serve these alongside my Roasted Peppers with Salt-Packed Anchovies and Marjoram, for an unexpected contrast.

(Serves 6 as an antipasto dish)

5 ripe red bell peppers
Extra-virgin olive oil
A handful of whole blanched almonds
Salt
2 small sprigs rosemary, the leaves chopped
A pinch of Aleppo pepper
A splash of dry Marsala
A teaspoon of honey

Place the peppers on a baking sheet, and broil them about 6 inches from the heat source. When they become black and charred, start turning them, charring them all around. You can also char them on an outdoor grill (a stove flame doesn’t really work well, as it blackens the peppers before they have a chance to cook through and become tender and sweet). When the peppers are thoroughly charred, let them sit in a covered bowl for about 10 minutes (this makes them easier to peel). Now peel and seed them (try to do this without running them under water, since water will wash away some of their sweet juices). Cut the peppers into thick slices.

In a medium skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add the almonds and a pinch of salt, and sauté until lightly golden, about 4 minutes. Add the peppers, the rosemary, and the Aleppo pepper, and sauté a minute longer, just to blend all the flavors. Add a splash of Marsala and the honey, turn off the heat, and give everything a stir. Add a pinch more salt if needed. Pour into a shallow serving bowl, and serve warm or at room temperature.

Couscous with Grilled Peppers, Ginger, Basil, and Merguez Sausage

Basil and ginger make a very good combination, as I discovered while looking for a replacement for cilantro, an herb often paired with ginger in recipes but a taste my Southern Italian brain wants to interpret as poison.

You can serve the couscous without the merguez, either as a side dish or alone as an easy lunch.

(Serves 4 as a main course)

2 ripe red bell peppers
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 large shallot, chopped
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
About 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon sugar
A generous pinch of Aleppo pepper, or a little less of Cayenne
2 cups low-salt canned chicken broth (or homemade broth, if you have it)
1 1/2 cups fast-cooking couscous
Salt
A small cucumber, peeled, seeded, and cut into small dice
A handful of basil leaves, cut into thin strips, plus a few nice looking sprigs for garnish
1 pound merguez sausage

Place the peppers on a baking sheet, and broil them about 6 inches from the heat source. When the peppers become black and charred, start turning them, charring them all around. You can also char them on an outdoor grill (a stove flame doesn’t really work well, as it blackens the peppers before they have a chance to cook through and become tender and sweet). When the peppers are thoroughly charred, let them sit in a covered bowl for about 10 minutes (this makes them easier to peel). Now peel and seed them (try to do this without running them under water, since water will wash away some of their sweet juices). Cut the peppers into small dice, and set them aside for a moment.

In a medium saucepan, heat the olive oil and butter over a medium-low flame. Add the shallot, garlic, and ginger, and sauté a minute or so to release their flavors. Add the cinnamon, sugar, and Aleppo pepper, and sauté a moment longer. Add the chicken broth, turn the heat to high, and bring to a boil. Pour the couscous into a shallow serving bowl. Pour on the hot broth, and cover the bowl with aluminum foil. Let sit for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat up a stove-top grill plate (or an outdoor grill). Grill the merguez, turning it several times, until it is browned and just cooked through, about 6 or 7 minutes.

Fluff the couscous with a fork, and place the merguez on top. Decorate with basil sprigs. Serve hot or warm.

Wheat Berry Salad with Roasted Peppers, Soppressata, and Parsley

I love the texture and flavor of wheat berries, especially served cool during the summer. Once you cook and cool them, you can add any number of ingredients to make an interesting salad. Here I’ve chosen roasted red peppers, bits of soppressata, and Italian parsley, one of my favorite summer herbs.

(Serves 5 as a first course or a side dish)

1 1/2 cups hard winter wheat berries (soft summer wheat cooks up a bit too mushy for this salad)
1 bay leaf, fresh if possible
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 ripe red bell peppers
1 large summer garlic clove, minced
A few scrapings of nutmeg
A generous pinch of sugar
3 scallions, cut into thin rounds, using some of the tender green part
A handful of pine nuts, lightly toasted
About 6 thin rounds of soppressata salami, skinned and cut into small dice
The juice from 1/2 lemon, mixed with 2 tablespoons cool water
A generous handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Put the wheat berries in a large pot, and add cold water to cover by about 4 inches. Add the bay leaf, and bring the water to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook, uncovered, at a low bubble for 40 to 45 minutes. Add hot water if the water level sinks to less than an inch above the wheat. When done, the grains will have swelled to about twice their size and be tender to the bite, with a bit of resistance. Some of the grains will have started to burst. Drain well, and pour into a large serving bowl. Remove the bay leaf. Drizzle with two tablespoons of olive oil, and season with salt and black pepper. Give the wheat berries a gentle toss, and let them come to room temperature.

While the wheat berries are cooling, place the peppers on a baking sheet, and broil them about 6 inches from the heat source. When the peppers become black and charred, start turning them, charring them all around. You can also char them on an outdoor grill (a stove flame doesn’t really work well; it blackens the peppers before they have a chance to cook through and become tender and sweet). When the peppers are thoroughly charred, let them sit in a covered bowl for about 10 minutes (this makes them easier to peel). Now peel and seed them (try to do this without running them under water, since water will wash away some of their sweet juices). Cut the peppers into small dice.

Add the peppers to the wheat berries. Add all the remaining ingredients, plus a drizzle of fresh olive oil, and give everything a gentle toss. Taste for salt and pepper, adding a little if needed. Let sit, unrefrigerated, for about 20 minutes before serving, to develop the flavor.

Recipes:

Wild Arugula Salad with Ricotta, Strawberries, and Pine Nuts
Wild Arugula with Shrimp, Cherry Tomatoes, and Parmigiano
Cavatelli with Wild Arugula, Mussels, and Sweet Bread Crumbs

I had my first taste of wild arugula as a child on Long Island, and I’ve loved it ever since. The Mastellones, our neighbors across the street, took a trip to their hometown of Sorrento, Italy, sometime in the late l960s and smuggled back clumps of wild arugula, relocating it in their backyard garden. The stuff took off like the weed that it is and has been thriving there ever since, some summers almost taking over the entire garden. They gave cuttings out to all the Italian neighbors, and soon the entire block was growing it. This was before even domestic arugula appeared in supermarkets, so it was a real novelty on Long Island. We called it rucchetta, which is what arugula usually goes by in Rome and in parts of Southern Italy. Either rucchetta selvatica or rucola selvatica is how you refer in Italian to this wild variety, with its intense, addictive bite. I’ve picked up seed packages of a cultivated form of wild arugula in Italy to hand out to friends with gardens (I can also sometimes find these on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, in the garden department of the indoor shopping mall). I’ve grown tiny pots of wild arugula on my window sills in the city. What they need is plenty of sun, which is what I’ve got (a little more space would be nice too). When the seeds first sprout they look like clover, with rounded leaves, but as they shoot up they develop skinny, spiky, dark green leaves, resembling a more refined-looking dandelion. The aroma is so pungent I get whiffs of it coming in through the open window.

Wild arugula in Italy was originally a foraged weed, but a cultivated variety of it is grown by gardeners and farmers. The type the Mastellones brought back was truly wild and extremely sharp, showing off the Italian love of bitter (a taste we don’t have appreciate enough in America). This summer, Mountain Sweet Berry Farm, of Roscoe, New York, started growing wild arugula and bringing it down to sell at the Union Square Greenmarket in the city on Saturdays. I’ve been buying lots of it and using it for salads, pastas, soups, and as beds for grilled meat and fish. It is a real luxury, since my window pots grow only tiny handfuls of leaves at a time. Mountain Sweet Berry Farm also grows an Italian green called agretti, which seems to be the same skinny, tube-like stuff used to garnish sushi and shellfish trays in Japanese restaurants. It tastes a little like salty grass and has a juicy crunch that’s good with a salad of tender, mild lettuces. It’s also nice mixed with grilled shrimp for a quick, warm salad. In Italy I’ve seen it tossed with pasta (but I’ve yet to try it that way).

When I use wild arugula in my cooking, I don’t do so with abandon, as I might with regular supermarket arugula. I wouldn’t, for instance, use it to make an arugula pesto, which would be overpoweringly bitter. You want little hits of it, tempered by other flavors, either sweet, mellow, or acid. In Italy a very popular salad combines wild arugula with cherry tomatoes, salt, and extra-virgin olive oil. That’s it. It’s intense and delicious, a pleasantly abrasive palate cleanser after a grilled steak, for instance. I’ve had that in Liguria, in Rome, and throughout the South. In my experiences with dining out in Italy, I’ve gotten the feeling that many Italians don’t order green salads in restaurants, maybe because they’re so easy to make at home they’re not worth ordering out. But this salad seems special, and everyone goes for it.

If you’d like to buy packages of wild arugula and other Italian seeds, check out seedsfromitaly.com. The company has an extensive collection of hard-to-find Italian vegetable and fruit varieties, and you can get excited reading all the poetic-sounding Italian names on their website. As an added bonus, the seed packages have gorgeous color illustrations of what you will eventually harvest. I recently ordered a whole bunch of things for a friend’s garden that included basilico Napolitano and Genovese, purple Sicilian cauliflower and pale green zucchini, a melon retato degli ortolani (which is traditionally eaten with Parma ham), several varieties of San Marzano tomatoes, and many other things. So far everything is sprouting and looks healthy.

Here are a few easy summer dishes I’ve made recently using Mountain Berry Farm’s wonderful wild arugula.

Wild Arugula Salad with Ricotta, Strawberries, and Pine Nuts

Here’s a salad that blends sweet, mellow, and bitter, three well-loved Italian tastes.

(Serves 4 as a first course)

1/4 pound wild arugula, well stemmed
1 cup whole-milk ricotta, drained if watery
A few sprigs of chervil, the leaves lightly chopped
A few large sprigs of flat-leaf parsley, the leaves chopped
Salt
A few scrapings of fresh nutmeg
A pint of small, sweet strawberries, hulled and left whole (if you must use large ones, cut them in half)
1 shallot, thinly sliced
A handful of pine nuts, lightly toasted
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
Extra-virgin olive oil
A generous pinch of sugar
Freshly ground black pepper

Lay out the arugula on four salad plates. In a small bowl blend the ricotta with the chervil, parsley, a pinch of salt, and a few scrapings of nutmeg. Pack the ricotta into four small custard cups (about 1/4 cup capacity), packing it down, and turn the ricotta molds out on top of the arugula (or just neatly spoon it on). Scatter the strawberries and shallot over the arugula, and the pine nuts over the ricotta.

In a small bowl, blend the red wine vinegar with 4 tablespoons of olive oil. Add a generous pinch of sugar, salt, and black pepper, and whisk briefly. Drizzle this over the arugula and strawberries. Give each ricotta mold a drizzle of fresh olive oil and few extra grindings of black pepper. Serve right away.

Wild Arugula with Shrimp, Cherry Tomatoes, and Parmigiano

This is a salad I’ve had once in Rome and a few times in Sicily and I’ve seen on menus elsewhere in Italy. It’s not really regional, but it seems to have become trendy, just, I think, because it’s so good.

(Serves 4 as a first course or a light lunch)

1 pound large shrimp, shelled and deveined
Salt
1 fresh bay leaf
The zest from 1 lemon, plus about a tablespoon of its juice
Extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 pound wild arugula, well stemmed
A pint of cherry tomatoes, cut in half
Freshly ground black pepper
A chunk of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese

Put up a large pot of water and bring it to a boil. Add a generous amount of salt and the bay leaf. Drop in the shrimp and blanch until just tender, 1 1/2 to 2 minutes or possibly a little longer, depending on the size of the shrimp. Scoop the shrimp from the water with a large strainer and spread it out on a sheet pan. Put the pan in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes to cool the shrimp. Place the shrimp in a bowl. Add the lemon zest, a little salt, and a drizzle of olive oil. Toss gently.

Lay the arugula out on four salad plates. Arrange the shrimp on top, and scatter on the tomatoes. Mix the lemon juice together with 4 tablespoons of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Drizzle this over the salads, and then give each plate two or three grindings of fresh black pepper. Shave a few thin slices of Parmigiano onto each plate. Serve right away.

Cavatelli with Wild Arugula, Mussels, and Sweet Bread Crumbs

I’ve eaten many pasta dishes in Puglia that contained both raw or simmered bitter greens and some type of seafood, and I’ve tried my own variations of this with anchovies, clams, swordfish, or calamari. The result is a simple combination that produces big flavor. You may, if you like, serve the mussels without pasta. Just ladle the sauce into shallow bowls and pass around some good bread to go with it.

(Serves 4 as a main course or 6 as a first course)

For the sweet bread crumbs:

Extra-virgin olive oil
3/4 cup homemade dry bread crumbs, not too finely ground
1 teaspoon sugar
A pinch of salt
1 tablespoon grated Pecorino cheese

For the pasta:

4 large, round tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
Salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 shallots, thinly sliced
1 small, fresh red chili, seeded and minced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
A few large thyme sprigs, the leaves chopped
1 1/2 pounds small mussels, well cleaned
A splash of dry Marsala or dry vermouth
1 pound cavatelli
A large handful of wild arugula, well stemmed

To make the sweet bread crumbs:

In a medium skillet heat a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. Add the bread crumbs and sauté, stirring frequently, until they’re very lightly golden and crisp, about 2 minutes. Add the sugar and salt, stirring it in. Transfer to a small bowl and let cool a few minutes. Then stir in the Pecorino.

To make the pasta:

Place the tomatoes in a colander, sprinkle them with a little salt, and let them drain for about 30 minutes.

Put up a large pot of pasta cooking water and bring it to a boil. Add a generous amount of salt.

In a pot large enough to hold all the opened mussels, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add the shallot, chili, garlic, and thyme and sauté for a minute, just to release the flavors. Add the mussels, tomatoes, and Marsala, turn the heat to high, and cook, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the mussels open, about 5 minutes (you want high heat so the juice from the tomatoes can reduce a bit).

While the mussels are cooking, drop the cavatelli into the water. When the cavatelli is al dente, drain and pour it into a very large serving bowl (you’ll need a lot of room to accommodate all the mussels). Add the mussel and tomato mixture and the arugula. Add a generous drizzle of fresh olive oil and toss well (the heat from the sauce will wilt the arugula slightly). Taste for salt (if your mussels are very salty, you may not need it, but most likely you’ll want a pinch or so). Serve right away, topping each bowl with a generous sprinkling of the sweet bread crumbs.