Italy

This is a tasty summertime dish for hot weather. The scapece part of the name derives from the Spanish escaveiche and ceviche (raw fish marinated in vinegar) but the Neapolitans use it to describe many things dressed with vinegar.

This takes a long time, but it's not a time-consuming dish. You need to allow time for the cut zucchini to dry in the sun, and afterward more time for the vinegar to settle in and mellow. Drying the zucchini helps it to cook up crunchy rather than mushy, so it stands up better to the vinegar.

Note that this recipe is not an agrodolce; there is no sugar. 

Here's a delicious mushroom soup with Italian sensibilities applied to an Austrian ancestor, from Trentino-Alto Adige in the Italian Alps on the Austrian border.

Mushrooms are an important part of Alpine cooking and northern Italian cuisine in general. Note that this includes an opening saute in butter instead of olive oil seen further south.

This soup represented that alpine region in our Northern Italy all-star feast.

This is a delicious cool-weather dish to accompany a rich meat dish, or just on its own. It's a classic accompaniment to roast goose, and it's fine with roast turkey, too, especially for a holiday table!

You can get perfectly good chestnuts in a jar, so there is no need to go through the tedious and finger-tearing process of peeling whole chestnuts. 

This Lombard classic is beef or veal shank slow-cooked until meltingly tender, and then served with a savory sauce and a contrasting zippy lemon gremolata. It is traditionally served with the beautiful golden Risotto Milanese.

This is a classic Florentine pork roast of Tuscany, Arista alla Fiorentina. Like much Tuscan food, it has few ingredients so they must be of top quality. 

In this case, it's just a pork loin roasted with rosemary, garlic, and black pepper, and a couple of whole cloves just to get wacky, in a Tuscan sense. 

This is a totally succulent and aromatic piece of meat that is wonderful fresh from the oven, but it is also good (and frequently) served cold in a picnic or other al fresco setting. I know that because I read it, but also because that's how I ate the leftovers with a little mostarda...there was no need to reheat them.

This is a simple vegetarian dish. According to the Accademia Italiana della Cucina, it's "typical of Caserta", a humdrum little town northeast of Naples with an immense and fabulous palace and gardens. I don't know why this simple dish has such specific roots, but there you have it. It's delicious in any event.

We visited Caserta in 2015 to see the royal palace of the Bourbon kings, and I recommend it! 

This Spezzatino di Coda di Manzo is a recipe from the northeastern Italian Alps. It includes typical mountain seasoning like juniper berries and bay leaves and it is typically served with polenta. This is not the iconic Oxtail Stew in the Roman Style - Coda alla Vaccinara, which has tomatoes and batons of celery in it. 

Oxtail has a lot of collagen, so slow cooking develops it into a rich, delicious stew full of umami goodness. Leftovers make a great sauce for pasta.