Italy

Polenta is often served soft and hot like mashed potatoes, but it's also really good baked. You cook it on the stiff side, and then spread it in a buttered pan and bake it to get it hot and puffy and a little crispy on the edges.

It is common to layer Fontina, Grana Padano, or other thin-sliced or grated cheese into the polenta, especially if it will be served as an appetizer. If it will be served with fish or with mushrooms, then the flavor of the cheese may clash; while common, it's not necessary.

Udine is a foodie haven northeast of Venice in Friuli-Venezia-Giulia. It has its own cuisine unlike much of the rest of Italy, heavily influenced by Austiran Alpine cooking.

This is another simple fish dish that's great for a weeknight. This fresh trout baked with lemon juice, olive oil, and marjoram comes together with very little effort and it never fails to please. 

In Udine, this is traditionally served with Polenta baked in the Oven.

Here's a spicy treat from hot, sunny Calabria! It's a very simple recipe, but it requires one hard-to-find ingredient: 'Nduja. 'Nduja is a spicy Calabrian paste of fatty pork and fiery Calabrian chilis. The spiciness of the meat is balanced by the sweetness of the onion, which is why you want a sweeter variety like Vidalia. 

And that's all there is to it: Sweet onion and spicy 'Nduja, held together in a smooth tomato sauce, and served over a good toothsome pasta!

Zozzona means a hot mess in Italian, and Pasta alla Zozzone is a rich delicious crowd pleaser of a hot mess! It's loaded up with everything to alarm your cardiologist: sausage, guanciale, pecorino romano, and egg yolks. There's tomato sauce too, so that's healthy.

This is from Lazio, land of the Big 4: Carbonara, Amatriciana, Gricia, and Cacio e Pepe. It's traditionally served with rigatoni or other short pasta. I used the wonderful Pasta Somma rigatoni from Gragnano. The pasta of Gragnano is hearty and toothsome and well able to support a rich sauce.

I got Ada Boni's wonderful Italian Regional Cooking many years ago and it is still one of my favorite sources of inspiration. This Sardinian dish captured my imagination probably 15 years ago and I have wanted to make it ever since.

It took about 10 years to find the wine. There are oceans of Vernaccia di San Gimignano available, it's a fine dry white wine made from the Vernaccia grape in Tuscany, but the Sardinians have a different idea. The Vernaccia di Oristano is a fortified wine made like a sherry, aged in oak and chestnut barrels, and it's considerably more expensive. They are nothing alike and one cannot be substituted for the other.

I guess it became a quest, and now it has reached a happy conclusion! 

Farinata is a crispy thin bread of chickpea four and water, cooked in an oiled skillet at high temperature. It's gluten-free, so it's not like most breads, but it's too crispy to be called a pancake. It has a natural sweetness, but I still classify it as a savory dish. In Liguria and along the northern Tuscan coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea as far as Pisa it's a street food, but we're not so familiar for it to have "bred contempt", so with good technique and quality ingredients it can go nicely with any assortment of aperitivi.

By all accounts that I have seen, the best farinata has a thin crispy crust with a soft custardy center, the whole thing perfumed with fresh rosemary and black pepper.

The key thing to know about farinata is that the chickpea flour-water mixture must rest for about 5 hours before you bake it. There's no rising, it just takes that long for the chickpea flour to get fully hydrated and stay tender and digestible.

Here's how to do it:

This recipe is not difficult and the flavors are wonderful! This would be perfectly suitable for a dinner during the holiday season.

You marinate and then braise the pork in Marsala with seasonings, then late in the cooking you add chestnuts. When the pork is done you blend the cooking liquid and chestnuts to make a sauce. It always gets rave reviews. I set aside some of the cooked chestnuts while still whole to use as a garnish. I love chestnuts!

This is the most famous of the Italian recipes for oxtail. It's got incredible rich flavor from slow cooking the meat with tomatoes and vegetables, and then finishing it with pine nuts, golden raisins, and bitter chocolate!

If you have leftovers, they'll go great with rigatoni in the classic Roman way.

In this classic Italian braised beef recipe, a Cappello del Prete (chuck blade) is cooked very "low and slow" for fall-apart tenderness with great flavor. 

As with most recipes, having the best equipment makes everything easier. For this one, I wanted to see just how "low-and-slow" I could go, keeping the pot at the lowest heat that would cook the meat. This is because I was cooking a Cappello del Prete, a tough cut from the shoulder with a great seam of connective tissue through the middle of it. Most American supermarkets do not carry this cut, but butchers can do it for you (I got mine from the butcher at Friends Market in Orleans, MA). 

Using this cut of meat, I needed the right tool, please see the Notes for more!

Unlike the similar (and costly) Beef Braised in Barolo which is cooked in only wine, this is cooked in 2/3 wine and 1/3 beef stock. This can be served over polenta like the Barolo beef, but it's also good with short pasta or crusty bread.