Sedano alla Molisana is a simple and delicious preparation of a vegetable that is sadly underappreciated in American kitchens: the humble celery. The trick that turns it from watery crunchy diet "food" into something worth serving to company is easy: you boil it first for 10 minutes! That means it's a great side dish if you are cooking pasta for supper because you already have a pot of boiling water, just be sure to cook the celery first!

After that, it's just a matter of good, common ingredients. You don't even need much patience for this one! 

I think any Genoese recipe is bound to be interesting, and this simple spinaci alla genovese recipe doesn't disappoint. For starters, it includes golden raisins and anchovies!

That's not as weird as it sounds. A lot of Italian cooking uses anchovies as a seasoning, in small quantities; it's way more interesting than salt! And the golden raisins are also used in a lot of northern Italian recipes, along with pine nuts and various spices, all thanks to the region's medieval dominance of Mediterranean sea trade from the Orient. Venetian cuisine is equally fascinating.

Here is a nice, easy summer dish to go with grilled meats. It's essentially just beans with sage. 

The name means "beans like little birds" and nobody is really sure where the little birds come in, except that the seasonings are typical of those used in poultry dishes. 

You can optionally add tomatoes, but I like these with just the delicate flavors presented here along with some grilled meat or maybe a strong-flavored fish like swordfish or salmon.

You can use canned beans, but you get better flavor if you use the dried beans and refresh them yourself, as described here. 

Tuna is popular in Sicily; it's used in this classic Sicilian dish, usually made with a long pasta like spaghetti, or the bucatini shown here, dressed with green olives. 

This is an easy recipe that comes together quickly so it's suitable for a weeknight after work.  

You don't use BumbleBee fancy white albacore tuna for this, but the more tender Italian preserved tuna belly in olive oil that we usually see in glass jars. You can always find it in an Italian market and sometimes in better supermarkets. 

This is a simple vegetable side dish that went great with halibut and again with a fancy dinner of shellfish on pasta.

I like how fennel pairs with seafood, and this recipe is very quick and easy.

This is a handy recipe to keep in mind. The fresh fennel is always available at the Stop & Shop supermarket near us, and it looks nice when served, too!

I use Trebbiano d'Abbruzzo for my cooking white wine, when I have it, but for this dish I was out of that so I went with my trusty standby, the Martini & Rossi Dry Vermouth - it goes with everything!

This beautiful golden risotto is rich and warming, and wonderful for a special occasion.

Risotto Milanese is not just a risotto in the style of Milan, but a real classic of Milanese cuisine with an origin story that features the wedding of the daughter of a master glazier from the cathedral.

It a pretty simple risotto; the magic is in the quality of the ingredients and the use of real saffron and top-quality parmigiano-reggiano cheese. The marrow is traditional but not often used in this country; I omitted it to keep the dish vegetarian.

Lorna's been revisiting the flavors of her childhood, and one of them was the humble banana. She only likes them practically green, so she'd buy a bunch and then it was not very many days before I'd inherit three or four perfectly ripe bananas. Naturally this was my first idea, but there are many, many recipes for Banana Bread online.

I tried a few recipes, each with their own strengths, and this was my favorite. It's from James Beard's workhorse Beard on Bread.

We thought this sounded wonderful, but in the end it seems to invite further experimentation before setting before distinguished guests.

The recipe comes from the normally excellent Silver Spoon Cookbook, which inclines me to work more with this. There are only a few ingredients, so it's easy to overdo one of them. 

This quick and easy veggie dish has an unusual mix of flavors that works out well as a side dish in hot or cold weather.

When you start "tasting it in your mind", it suddenly seems copacetic with all sorts of dishes, from beef and pork to poultry to seafood. There's not much to it except for a brilliant combination of just a few flavors. 

This is best with a light vegetable or chicken stock. A beef stock would overpower the raisins. I don't know how well a fish stock would go.

This can be made a day ahead and reheated in the microwave. Leftovers store well. 

This is very simple and delicious! I've made it three times since learning of it maybe 5 weeks ago.

Halibut is a dense, meaty fish with a delicate flavor that responds well to light sauces.

It only takes a little while to cook this up and it requires just a few common ingredients, so it doesn't require much planning or preparation to have a nice dinner after work.

You can do this with sole as well.  

This vegetable side dish is easy to make and the presentation is pretty. Leftovers work fine as a cold salad, but reheating it can overcook the beans.

In Italian, you would call this Fagiolini Glassato al Sesamo.  

This was a special request from Lorna, reminiscing about her mom's kitchen. It's easy to make, requires only a few common ingredients, and it's not too sweet.

I liked this best with a cup of black coffee. I thought ice cream or whipped cream would be overdoing the dairy. 

This is baked at a pretty slow 300 degrees. A lot of ovens become less accurate at lower (and higher) temperatures, so it may take longer than you expect; it's a good idea to have an oven thermometer. 

This is a particularly nice way to serve that old favorite Spaghetti with White Clam Sauce. It's really easy, and attractive if you can get the fresh shellfish. 

The only trick to this is supplementing the dried angel-hair pasta and the canned clam sauce with some fresh shellfish for presentation (and nutrition, to be sure), and cooking ingredients for them. 

Of course, you can go "all in" and make the sauce entirely from scratch, and even make the pasta at home, and while you're at it, how about you go and dig those clams yourself? So this is the version for people who can't do all that, and you can feel free to put in any extra labor that works for you. (Don't forget to update the Preparation Time!)

This recipe is for Turbot (use Halibut on this end of the Atlantic) cooked in sparkling dry white wine and mushrooms. It's delicate and wonderful!

I was gifted a bottle of Anno Domini prosecco by a neighbor. We don't drink prosecco very often, but I had seen this recipe and couldn't resist. And the recipe needs just a cup, so there's enough left to serve two for dinner!

White button mushrooms or baby bellas are good with this. If you use mushrooms that are too flavorful, you overpower the sauce which is really quite nice if you let it be. 

This is the classic partner  to Pansotti, a traditional Ligurian ravioli filled with Preboggion (a mix of herbs of the Italian Riviera). We can't get that, so I had to use a store-bought spinach ravioli. But the Walnut Sauce is the star of the show... I saw a few recipes, and this one from the charming blog A Small Kitchen in Genoa looked really good. 

It was certainly easy enough. I made only two changes: she calls for fresh marjoram and I substituted the more readily available (in Massachusetts in April) Oregano, and she skips the common step of soaking the walnuts in boiling water (which I did, without the unnecessary step of rubbing off the skins). 

So we had this with spinach ravioli, and it's not Genoa, but it was still mighty tasty!