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 an interesting recipe from Valle d'Aosta on the Alpine French border! The chicken is cooked between layers of thinly sliced onion, and the liquid comes from a 2:1 mix of white wine and gin that slowly mingles with the cooking juices from the chicken legs and the onion. The only seasonings are bay leaf and juniper berries, so the flavor profile is different from many other Italian dishes. It's simple and delicious.

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 an oddball with something of a pedigree. It's named for the Clover Club of Philadelphia, a private gentlemen's club that served that city's captains of industry from the late 1800s up to about the time of Prohibition.

There's the original Clover Club Cocktail which uses an egg white, and then this "royal" version that uses the egg yolk, and this one uses lime juice instead of lemon juice. Both call for raspberry syrup, but grenadine is an allowable alternative.

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. 

This translates to "Meatloaf in the style of Modena", but it's really more like a cross between a traditional American meatloaf and a French ballotine or galantine: It has many ingredients mixed into the meat, and then it's poached in a fish poacher rather than baked.

This is traditionally served with boiled vegetables and Salsa Verde Modenese. 

There's no turkey in this dish! Cape Cod Turkey is a classic 18th-19th Century New England fish dish made with fresh or salt cod and dressed with white sauce and hard-boiled egg. It's a close relative of the smokey Finnan Haddie.

The version described here is made with salt cod, which would have been common in most of New England more than a short distance from the coast. Salt Cod, even after it's been freshened, has a denser, meatier texture than fresh cod. 

Here's another classic Sicilian presentation of their beloved swordfish, this one "for the glutton"! 

It's a pretty dish, and hearty with cherry tomatoes and green olives, suitable for company but easy enough for a weeknight.  

I had this old classic at Leunig's Bistro in the charming Church Street plaza in downtown Burlington Vermont to celebrate Joe Biden winning back the "Blue Wall" rust belt states in 2020.

I wanted something that suits an old guy and that honors those rest belt states, and the venerable Rusty Nail was just the thing. 

Leunig's has excellent bars both upstairs and down, well stocked, and beautiful with Art Deco decor. The bartenders are knowledgeable, so of course they had the ingredients and the know-how to make this fine cocktail! 

Drambuie is a liqueur made of Scotch whiskey blended with heather honey and spices. It's quite lovely, but expensive for a home bar where it won't be used much - but it's a nice Christmas gift!

This is a simple, homey dish, and a good combination for a ribsticking winter lunch.

Lorna had secured a big fat Eastham turnip, knowing how well I like those, so even though it's not an Italian variety, it did a great job in this dish. 

There's a lot of confusion in these parts with regard to the humble turnip. If you care about such details, I refer you to New England Heirloom Turnips & Rutabagas. The executive summary is this: turnips tend to be small and white inside, and the large yellow-fleshed root often referred to in New England is really a rutabaga. In the photo above there's only the Eastham turnip (white inside); the orangey pieces were colored by the sausage fat.

Here's a strange and delicious dish from the mountains of Valle d'Aosta.

It's odd to see fish and red wine together. It works here, but you want to use a lighter Piedmont red like a Dolcetto or a simple Nebbiolo, or an inexpensive Pinot Noir or Chianti. 

You make a sauce by preparing a regular soffritto and cooking it in the wine, then you thicken it with a roux, so there's flavor and texture that you want to complement the trout. The fish is baked whole or headless in the skin, so when the diner takes a fish and opens it on the plate, s/he can spoon on as much or as little sauce as desired.

Here's an easy potato dish when you want something lighter than a scalloped potatoes and more interesting than Steamed New Potatoes or Italian Roast Potatoes. Parsley, chives, and butter are all natural allies of the humble potato, and the shallots and white wine bring it to another level.

There's one tricky part to this recipe: you have to quickly peel and slice the potatoes when they are hot from boiling. To do this, I keep a bowl of cold water in the sink so I can cool off my fingers and the outside of the potato while I work.