Canned Tomato

I love this over pasta, but it’s also good used as you would salsa, hot or cold: over grilled or poached fish, meat, or poultry, or even as a dip. Be sure, one day, to try the Spanish version (page 606).

From the Mediterranean coast of Spain comes this distinctive sauce, whose flavors are reminiscent of bouillabaisse. Not surprisingly, it’s often served on grilled fish, but it is equally good on chicken and incredible over pork. If possible, use strong-tasting oranges—Valencias are a good choice—not overly sweet ones like navels. In Spain, the oranges used for this are very acidic, even bitter.

Probably the quickest salsa you can make and a fresh, delicious one for chips or simply cooked fish or chicken. Best with good fresh tomatoes, but still decent with canned (and definitely better with canned than with hard, unripe “fresh”).

A standard and very useful salsa, great with anything grilled. I don’t make it fiery hot—it’s based on mild chiles—but you can add more of the hot ones if you like, and it’s easy enough.

The classic recipe for steaming clams and a good topping for pasta. In Italy, the smallest clams possible are used—with shells often not much bigger than your thumbnail—and here the best to use for that purpose are tiny little necks, mahogany clams, or cockles. When buying hardshell clams, make sure the shells are undamaged and tightly shut; this means the clams are alive. The only remaining challenge is to make sure the clam shells are entirely free of sand (you need not worry about the interior; that’s the advantage of these clams over steamers). Wash the shells well and even scrub them if necessary. If any clams remain closed after cooking, simply pry them open with a knife or your fingers.

A classic Spanish tapa, cooked quickly in small ramekins and served sizzling. In Spain, the ramekins are put over direct heat, which, frankly, makes me nervous; I use a heavy skillet and take that right to the table. The Spanish are practically obsessed with the type of shrimp they use and prefer them to be fresh rather than frozen; but most of us don’t have much choice. That’s okay: as long as the shrimp are of high quality, the dish will be delicious. Double the amounts here if you want to serve this as a main course, and, no matter when you serve it, be sure to offer bread as well; the sauce is incredible.

The most exciting pissaladière I ever had was served it the open-air market in the heart of old Nice. It was baked in a wood-burning oven a few blocks away, sent to the market by bicycle, and eaten standing up or at picnic tables shaded by huge awnings. The wedges were gently sweet and intensely salty; the crust, just a half inch thick, was perfumed with the local olive oil and was perfectly browned and crisp. It was so simple—mostly just sweet onions on a wonderful crust. You can make a wonderful pissaladière at home: just be sure to cook the onions very, very slowly.

You are served this everywhere in Istanbul and everywhere told this story: the dish is so delicious that the imam or priest to whom it was served simply fainted—“bayildi.” (Some people say he was so very thrifty that he fainted at the profligate amount of olive oil used, but since olive oil is no longer especially expensive—and a half cup is not that much, after all—you can enjoy this dish without guilt.) As is almost always the case, the small, light-skinned “Japanese” eggplants work best because they lack the bitterness common to larger eggplants. If you cannot get those, use the smallest eggplants you can find. This dish is always served at room temperature (or cold), so make it ahead of time.

The Mediterranean is rich in mussels, in particular in the rocky coastal regions. They are also abundant in the coastal regions of the United States. Cozze, or mussels, are a very popular dish in Italy, especially around Naples. It seems that just about every Italian American restaurant has some rendition of a mussels dish: alla Posillipo (spicy tomato sauce), alla marinara (mild fresh tomato sauce), and so on. Well, here is a spicy one. Mussels are not an expensive seafood and deliver a lot of flavor if fresh and still briny from the sea. Otherwise, save your San Marzano for another dish.

This shrimp dish is most extravagant if made with big, crunchy shrimp, but if you are price-conscious, medium-sized or even small shrimp will still be delicious. Keep in mind that the cooking time decreases as the size of the shrimp decreases. The amount of peperoncino you use to obtain the “Fra Diavolo,” or “Brother Devil,” is to your liking. Fra Diavolo sauce, originally made with lobster chunks still in the shell, is a creation of Italian immigrants in New York City at the turn of the twentieth century.

Vegetables are often used together with fish in traditional Italian cooking. This recipe is over the top and seems to have every available vegetable cooked with shrimp; to me it resembles jambalaya without the chicken and sausages, and it is great served over steamed rice or pasta.

Although this dish has all the makings of an Italian dish, everything I have read points to its being an Italian American invention, mostly likely conceived in New York. In Italy they do make a sauce with lobsters with which they dress pasta and risotto, but it is in the form of brodetto, seafood stew—lighter than the Italian American Fra Diavolo, made with onions instead of garlic, and without oregano. Here I give you a delicious version that is a combination of both.

Cioppino is a delicious Ligurian fish stew, and since many emigrants from Liguria settled in San Francisco, some of the best renditions of the dish on this side of the ocean are found in San Francisco. California Italians were great contributors to the American fabric, and I am sure they all enjoyed a good bowl of cioppino. It might be a bit more complicated to eat, and perhaps your guests will balk, but I like my cioppino with crab legs in their shells.

There are endless renditions of lasagna: with just cheese, with vegetables, with mushrooms, with meat. Once you have mastered the art of cooking and layering the pasta, the filling can be your choice. But here I give you the Italian American rendition, one that you make with store-bought dry pasta. The major effort here is in making the Bolognese sauce, and in the Bolognese recipe I give you on page 158, you can make the sauce in advance and freeze it, all ready for when you decide to make a lasagna.

I don’t encounter stuffed shells in Italy much; stuffed paccheri (big and floppy rigatoni-lookalikes) are much more common there. But I have sold a lot of stuffed shells throughout my restaurant days. This is comfort food—pasta stuffed with milky ricotta and topped with oozing melted cheese, and just about everybody loves it. It is a common dish, present in many Italian American restaurant menus and households. It is also very convenient, because the oven does the work, and you can feed a large number of guests.

This dish has roots back in the Renaissance, when people hunted for food and only the wealthy could enjoy chicken. This is good when made with a whole chicken, but I prefer it made only with drumsticks and thighs. It can be made well in advance, and will reheat and remain moist. It is great with polenta or pasta, but I love it with a chunk of crusty semolina bread.

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

There was a time when calamari was not much consumed in America and it was considered a cheap fish. But Italians love calamari, and it became the fish of choice of the Italian immigrants. You can find calamari today as a delicacy in contemporary restaurants of every ethnicity. Spicy calamari with linguine is a trademark of Italian American restaurants all over America.

This dish is especially good when made with live blue-claw crabs, but sometimes they are difficult to find. The snow crab—or its more expensive cousin, the Alaskan king crab—will yield a most delicious sauce as well. In immigrant Italian American fishing communities, such as those in Delaware and Rhode Island, this dish was made by the fishermen’s wives from the unsellable catch.