In the United States, Marinara sauce has come to mean a simple, vegetarian tomato sauce, but it isn't that way in Italy. Marinara means "in the mariner's style", which emphasizes thrift and availability of local, inexpensive ingredients, sometimes but not aways including  some sort of seafood that might have been by-catch.

Remember that not all marinai were fishermen, and dinner might have been prepared at sea or back in port. This recipe provides a base from which you can unleash your inner galley-cook!

This feisty pasta dish is named for the fiery protagonist of Cavalleria Rusticana, an opera by Pietro Mascagni (who scored this timeless hit in a competition as a young man, and then never had another hit).

Like his brilliant little opera, this dish served a place in your permanent repertoire! Bravo!

This punchy little lunch dish goes great with some crusty bread! 

Here is a presentation somewhat more restrained than the Swordfish Provencal or the Sicilian Swordfish alla Ghiotta. 

After serving these steaks for dinner, I cut up the leftovers and tossed them in the sauce to use over pasta for lunch the next day.

This is a hearty winter dish, bursting with flavor and calories! I think this would be good after shoveling snow for an hour. It's quite easy, you just boil potatoes and then simmer them in cream and top with cooked andouille sausage. The andouille is spicy (especially if you use an American Cajun variety), but the cream and the potatoes moderate the punchiness to a fine degree; this is easy to gobble down more than you should.

The Fonduta Valdostana is the Italian form of the French/Swiss Fondue, popular in the Valle d'Aosta on the southern slopes of the French Alps. The key differences are:

• It's made with only Fontina Val d'Aosta, not a blend of cheeses.
• It's thickened with egg yolk.
• It's served in individual bowls or cups, not communally.
• It's eaten with a spoon and bread, not with long forks and a variety of foods for dipping.

The recipe isn't difficult, but you must plan ahead both for the soaking step at the beginning, and then to be sure that it is hot and ready to serve at the right time for your diners. 

As for the fontina cheese, there are three broad classes of it. The red-coated Danish variety is not suitable for this dish; it has an insipid flavor and an objectionable consistency. The brown-wrapped mass-produced Italian variety and the related Fontal are acceptable and surely used in many households. For a special event (and certainly I you have the white truffle!) you want to get the artisanal Fontina Val d'Aosta from a good cheese market or Italian gourmet shop.

A fougasse is a French focaccia, often cut into elaborate shapes for more crusty surface area. If you are in the area of Kittery, Maine, you can find excellent full and half-size fougasse at Beach Pea Bakery that you would be proud to bring to any family event.

You can make it yourself, if you have a few hours to allow time for the dough to rise; baking takes under 30 minutes. If you want to do the traditional sourdough version and you don't have a starter, you can make one but it takes a few days to get really active, or you could try the Biga Starter, which is ready in a day.

The cuts are important. They serve to provide more crusty surface for the bread. This bread is not a light, airy load, it's all about the olive oil and salt and other flavors that you include. It's great with wine and cheese.

This has been called the most expensive omelette in the world, which it may be at 35 Euros if you get it at its birthplace in the shadow of the imposing Mont St-Michel on a little island off Normandy. There's some lore about it that seems to be more a matter of effective marketing than of actual tradition.

So what is it? It's a very fluffy omelet with nothing else. Much has been written about how to achieve the proper fluffiness, but the official recipe is a secret of that restaurant and the various attempts that you see online cover a wide range of efforts. 

From what I can pull together from the history, a brief description by Mere Annette Poulard herself, the many articles about it, and my own attempts, I think I have something that is very close to what she would have served in her little kitchen in 19th century Normandy.

I first enjoyed herb-stuffed Roman artichokes in Rome, where they were naturally well-prepared. It was a delicious dish that I vowed to reproduce one day, not knowing that there's a lot to learn about preparing artichokes. 

The basic principle is easy enough: you trim the tough outer leaves and the tips, scoop out the fibrous choke, stuff with parsley and mint, and cook. Well, trimming and scooping takes some time if you're not a long-experienced Roman sous-chef!

This is a wonderful and comparatively simple dessert from the mountains of northern Italy, but it requires a food mill to get the proper texture and look. I made this one for a feast that focused specifically on Italy's Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta regions. The city of Val d'Aosta and the region are at the foot of that famous Alpine mountain on the border between Italy and Switzerland. It is traditionally topped with whipped cream to resemble the snow-capped mountain. In the photo it is surrounded by Marrons Glace and foil-wrapped gianduia (chocolate hazelnut candies) from Torino.

Some recipes put this on a base of Swiss Broyage, which is nice but it adds over an hour of cooking time to whip and dry the meringue.

To get the rugged traditional appearance, sweetened chestnut paste is passed through a potato ricer, forming long threads of paste. You might be able to reproduce that look by forcing it through a colander, but I've never tried that.

You can make quite a pretty salad if you have access to good mushrooms, which is getting easier in New England now that several farms have started in Maine. This one includes Chestnut Mushrooms, Lion's Mane, Blue Oyster, and Button Mushrooms, dressed with olive oil and lemon juice with sea salt, fresh basil, and parsley.

This pretty Laxfilé på grönsaksbädd was one of the centerpieces of our Swedish Christmas Dinner. Fish is certainly appropriate for a Swedish dinner, and salmon is perfect for a festive one. This salmon roasted and served on top of colorful winter root vegetables makes a pretty platter on the julbord.

You could use other vegetables of course, but to be traditional, remember that by Christmastime in Sweden, the freshest vegetables were those in the root cellar.

Few dishes are as mocked and reviled as lutfisk. It has a peculiar gummy texture, a strange translucency, and virtually no flavor.

I've tried cooking lutfisk 4-5 times now, first by the most traditional versions, later with tips from lutfisk fans on the internet, some with melted butter, another with a bechamel sauce... some preparation hold the secret, right?

Finally, I tried my own version. Packaged lutfisk has little flavor of its own, so I wrapped it in bacon because bacon makes everything delicious. 

Except lutfisk. It was amazing! The flavor of the bacon vanished, overwhelmed by the non-flavor of the lutfisk. I had to promise to my diners that my lutfisk studies are ended.