Italy

This well-known favorite dates back less than a hundred years. It was invented on the Neapolitan island of Ischia in the 1950s by a creative host who had hungry guests and little in the icebox to work with.

In Italian, "puttanesca" means something like "trashy", and it can be applied to prostitutes and to pasta preparations. In this case the inventive chef gave his dish a provocative name that reflected its scrounged origins and delighted his guests!

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 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.