Many years ago, "Stuffed Eggs" roamed the buffet tables and canape trays of European and American high society. Today in the USA, "Devilled Eggs" are pretty much the sole survivor of this once-plentiful class of hors d'oeuvre. You can still find egg plates like the one in the photo at antiques shops.
The Escoffier Cookbook has many recipes, and The Silver Spoon Cookbook has some good recipes using Italian flavor profiles. This recipe uses anchovy and lemon juice with chopped walnuts.
Here's a very simple, flavorful way to bring a little-used vegetable into play with any rich heavy main course. The dripping-wet endives are braised in their own liquid in olive oil flavored with garlic and mint. Cooking reduces the natural bitterness of the endive without eliminating it completely.
Indivie Intere "a Crudo" are traditionally served with roasts, especially with veal, but they will do well with any heavy main course where cooked bitter greens do well. The bitterness helps to cut the unctuousness of the fat in such dishes.
I think this is likely to fight with a red wine that has any tannins in it; from that perspective the bitterness serves the purpose of the tannins in the wine. I might serve this when the best wines of the dinner are done and we're on to something softer, or maybe with a white wine.
I show this on a bed of Black Venus Rice, but I bet it would be a bang-up dynamic pairing with the Gorgonzola Risotto!
This pretty golden riff on the classic Sicilian Pasta con Sarde has plenty of goodness.
Pasta con le Sarde a Mare is literally "Pasta with the sardines (still) in the sea" - it contains no sardines at all!
It does have tender fennel, saffron, golden raisins, pine nuts, and other foodie goodness, so it's totally delicious, especially if you didn't have your heart set on those sardines.
It uses anchovies for a salty marine flavor, but if you used a teaspoon of salt instead then this would be a vegetarian dish.
This pasta-with-mushrooms dish is different from the fusilli recipe, a little more tricky to make and I think more interesting.
The original recipe uses dried and fresh porcini mushrooms, but the fresh ones are hard to get here so I used button mushrooms and the they they are cooked they were still memorably delicious.
Bucatini is a long round pasta somewhat like a fat spaghetti. You could substitute spaghetti or linguini.
Ragù is a generic word for sauce, except that for a lot of people the only sauce they mean is this super-classic meat sauce from Bologna. It's very rich, but well-balanced, and it's delicious with many wines.
This is usually served in generous amounts on small quantities of broad flat pasta like a tagliatelle.
This uses a million ingredients and it takes some time to prepare, but you can easily double or triple the recipe and freeze the extra. Don't cut corners on the ingredients; they are all here for a reason, and together they make a great harmony of flavors. After all, if you were staging an opera and had no tenor, you wouldn't substitute a baritone and figure nobody will notice!
This piquant Lombard classic is best used as a side dish. The creamy-smooth risotto packs a pungent punch of Gorgonzola deliciousness, a little of which goes a long way.
This is a good side dish for a strongly flavored main course of beef or turkey, and with vegetable sides that will hold their own.
If you want to serve this as a bigger part of the meal, then you may want something sweet to balance it; I think sliced pear or apple would go very well with this.
This traditional Genoese recipe is fun and very easy.
Mandilli de Saea means "silk handkerchiefs", and the name comes from the very simple nature of the pasta: squares of very thinly rolled fresh pasta. Being so thin and fresh, they cook up in no time! These are best with a fresh-made Genoese basil pesto made with the best ingredients that you can get.
This classic is all about the quality and artistry of the sauce. You want to use good pasta, of course, but a great Bolognese sauce has texture and layers of complex flavor.
A good Bolognese sauce takes time to make. For this photo I used Nonni's Classic Bolognese that I bought at the deli at Friends Market in Orleans, MA.
The Italian recipe that I have for this calls for porgy, but I can't get porgy so I used halibut and it came out great.
Fresh fennel is a great flavor to go with white fish. That's good, because there aren't many other flavors here to work with so the match has to be a great one!
This is another of those recipes that goes great with pasta because you need a pot of boiling water anyway.
This is totally decadent dish from the Piedmont region is suitable for most American vegetarian diners. It's expensive, so be sure to use top-shelf ingredients throughout.
Unlike other mushroom risottos, this one uses only dried authentic porcini mushrooms. The Barolo wine is a luxury product, too, but you need just a cup for the risotto so you can save the rest for the table.
