This is an amazing recipe that works best as an appetizer if served on its own. You could make a supper of it served with pasta or rice because the sauce is quite flavorful and it really benefits from having something mild to balance it.

This recipe has many ingredients and it uses many pans and burners. It's fun to make, and the result is amazing, but you really have to read it through carefully and assemble all of your ingredients and utensils first. Believe it or not, this is a simplified version of the recipe in the The Silver Spoon Cookbook!

Tocco is Italian for Touch. I don't know why this classic Genoese pasta sauce is called Tocco, but it's delicious in whatever language you use.

You braise a chuck roast with some Mirepoix and beef stock low and slow to extract all the flavor of the beef. Then the beef goes in the fridge for some other use - it's the now extra-flavorful stock that you're after. This is often served with ravioli, but it works with any pasta.

This is a great winter recipe! It simmers on the back burner for hours, warming the kitchen and smelling delicious. And when it's done, you have that "boiled beef'' all tender and ready for some other use, maybe as a ravioli filling.

I have examined many versions of this recipe. Many of them use one shortcut or another, some use additional or fewer herbs; this one seemed the most promising, and it worked out really well. I expect to make it every winter! 

This was a surprise! I don't usually think of olives and cream together, but this was delicious, and really easy. 

For the olives, get good tender Kalamata or Gaeta olives in a jar or from the deli counter, not those woody little horrors that come in a can.

This is usually made with penne, but any short pasta will do. 

This is a flavorful way to wake up cod.

Most of the work is preparing a basic fresh tomato sauce, so you could save time by using sauce from a jar if you are in a hurry, or just doctor a jarred sauce with some white wine and fresh parsley. I prefer the texture of the diced tomatoes to a smooth sauce; maybe you can find a sauce like that.

This is another simple dish for a weeknight.

It's just a white fish dusted with flour and sauteed in butter in which you have also cooked some fresh sage leaves to flavor the butter, just like the Pork Chops with Butter and Sage.

I like this with cod, which responds well to many flavors, but it does get delicate when cooked, and easily broken, so this might not be a great dish to serve company for a fancy dinner. I bet it would be fine with lemon sole or gray sole. 

It's delicious on its own, but even better with an unoaked dry white wine, or a chilled dry vermouth!

Here's a simple and fast pasta dish with capers that can go with pretty much anything. It can easily be vegetarian if you omit the anchovy, and even vegan, depending on the pasta that you use.  

This is traditionally made with spaghetti, but I like to use short pasta like shells or the lumaconi shown here so the capers don't all sink to the bottom of the dish. 

Here's an oddball with something of a pedigree. It's named for the Clover Club of Philadelphia, a private gentlemen's club that served that city's captains of industry from the late 1800s up to about the time of Prohibition.

There's the original Clover Club Cocktail which uses an egg white, and then this "royal" version that uses the egg yolk, and this one uses lime juice instead of lemon juice. Both call for raspberry syrup, but grenadine is an allowable alternative.

Here's a superfast one-pan recipe for swordfish. 

Lemon and capers are common in Italian swordfish recipes because the strong flavors go well together and stand up to the strong flavor of the fish. Many other recipes include tomatoes, which also go well but which require a little more cooking time. 

This translates to "Meatloaf in the style of Modena", but it's really more like a cross between a traditional American meatloaf and a French ballotine or galantine: It has many ingredients mixed into the meat, and then it's poached in a fish poacher rather than baked.

This is traditionally served with boiled vegetables and Salsa Verde Modenese. 

There's no turkey in this dish! Cape Cod Turkey is a classic 18th-19th Century New England fish dish made with fresh or salt cod and dressed with white sauce and hard-boiled egg. It's a close relative of the smokey Finnan Haddie.

The version described here is made with salt cod, which would have been common in most of New England more than a short distance from the coast. Salt Cod, even after it's been freshened, has a denser, meatier texture than fresh cod. 

Here's another classic Sicilian presentation of their beloved swordfish, this one "for the glutton"! 

It's a pretty dish, and hearty with cherry tomatoes and green olives, suitable for company but easy enough for a weeknight.  

I had this old classic at Leunig's Bistro in the charming Church Street plaza in downtown Burlington Vermont to celebrate Joe Biden winning back the "Blue Wall" rust belt states in 2020.

I wanted something that suits an old guy and that honors those rest belt states, and the venerable Rusty Nail was just the thing. 

Leunig's has excellent bars both upstairs and down, well stocked, and beautiful with Art Deco decor. The bartenders are knowledgeable, so of course they had the ingredients and the know-how to make this fine cocktail! 

Drambuie is a liqueur made of Scotch whiskey blended with heather honey and spices. It's quite lovely, but expensive for a home bar where it won't be used much - but it's a nice Christmas gift!

This is a simple, homey dish, and a good combination for a ribsticking winter lunch.

Lorna had secured a big fat Eastham turnip, knowing how well I like those, so even though it's not an Italian variety, it did a great job in this dish. 

There's a lot of confusion in these parts with regard to the humble turnip. If you care about such details, I refer you to New England Heirloom Turnips & Rutabagas. The executive summary is this: turnips tend to be small and white inside, and the large yellow-fleshed root often referred to in New England is really a rutabaga. In the photo above there's only the Eastham turnip (white inside); the orangey pieces were colored by the sausage fat.