Italy

This is a delicious pasta dish made with the bewitching pink Sicilian Pesto Trapanese, completely different from the green Ligurian pesto so familiar to American diners. The pesto from Trapani uses crushed almonds, tomatoes, and cheese, rather than the basil and pine nuts of the Genoese version.

Unlike northern pasta dishes that are often served with ravioli and other fresh egg pastas, the southern ones are more often served with dried pasta like the wonderful IGP-protected Pasta di Gragnano.

Here's a light fish dish from Livorno, on the Tuscan coast not far from Pisa. It bursts with flavor from tomatoes, capers, and black olives. You can make this with any sort of flaky white fish, or with freshened salt cod (baccalà). It's a great weeknight dish because the whole thing comes together in under 30 minutes, and except for the fish, most of the ingredients may already be in your kitchen.

This can be served on its own or with a side of pasta, rice, or polenta. You can dress it up by adding some mussels or littleneck clams. 

You will deglaze the pan with 1/4 cup of white wine, so pick something that you'd like to drink with dinner!

This simple Tuscan dish showcases aglione, the giant mild garlic of southern Tuscany. We know it in this country as elephant garlic, and it's not so easy to find these days; I found the one I used here in a Wegman's Supermarket.

All it is is a puree of elephant garlic fried in oil and then simmered with tomatoes and a chili for 20 minutes. It traditionally served with rustic Tuscan pici, a thick, often hand rolled spaghetti.

Here's a nice light pasta dish from Basilicata and Puglia. It has an enchanting summery flavor. Make this when you have plenty of fresh mint on hand. The nights are getting cold, I expect a frost soon, so today I harvested about 10-12 mint plants and this classic recipe was my first thought.

This is traditionally made with strascinati, a sort of stretched orecchiette common in those regions, but any short flat pasta will do.

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!