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 an interesting recipe! The chicken is cooked between layers of thinly sliced onion, and the liquid comes from a 2:1 mix of white wine and gin that slowly mingles with the cooking juices from the chicken legs and the onion. The only seasonings are bay leaf and juniper berries, so the flavor profile is different from many other Italian dishes. It's simple and delicious.
These sugar snap peas are delicious cooked "in bianco", which is to say just olive oil, onion, and white wine. You want very fresh sugar snap peas or snow peas for this, and a good white wine - not the best in your cellar, but something that you would be happy to share with guests.
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 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 mild green sauce has a base of chopped hard-cooked eggs, parsley, and olive oil, seasoned with garlic, lemon zest, and capers.
It is used with the "Modena Meatloaf Polpettone alla Modenese. This should not be confused with the Piquant Green Sauce that goes with the Genoese Cappon Magro.
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.
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.
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.
