This is a simple vegetable side dish that went great with halibut and again with a fancy dinner of shellfish on pasta.

I like how fennel pairs with seafood, and this recipe is very quick and easy.

This is a handy recipe to keep in mind. The fresh fennel is always available at the Stop & Shop supermarket near us, and it looks nice when served, too!

I use Trebbiano d'Abbruzzo for my cooking white wine, when I have it, but for this dish I was out of that so I went with my trusty standby, the Martini & Rossi Dry Vermouth - it goes with everything!

This beautiful golden risotto is rich and warming, and wonderful for a special occasion.

Risotto Milanese is not just a risotto in the style of Milan, but a real classic of Milanese cuisine with an origin story that features the wedding of the daughter of a master glazier from the cathedral.

It a pretty simple risotto; the magic is in the quality of the ingredients and the use of real saffron and top-quality parmigiano-reggiano cheese. The marrow is traditional but not often used in this country; I omitted it to keep the dish vegetarian.

Lorna's been revisiting the flavors of her childhood, and one of them was the humble banana. She only likes them practically green, so she'd buy a bunch and then it was not very many days before I'd inherit three or four perfectly ripe bananas. Naturally this was my first idea, but there are many, many recipes for Banana Bread online.

I tried a few recipes, each with their own strengths, and this was my favorite. It's from James Beard's workhorse Beard on Bread.

We thought this sounded wonderful, but in the end it seems to invite further experimentation before setting before distinguished guests.

The recipe comes from the normally excellent Silver Spoon Cookbook, which inclines me to work more with this. There are only a few ingredients, so it's easy to overdo one of them. 

This quick and easy veggie dish has an unusual mix of flavors that works out well as a side dish in hot or cold weather.

When you start "tasting it in your mind", it suddenly seems copacetic with all sorts of dishes, from beef and pork to poultry to seafood. There's not much to it except for a brilliant combination of just a few flavors. 

This is best with a light vegetable or chicken stock. A beef stock would overpower the raisins. I don't know how well a fish stock would go.

This can be made a day ahead and reheated in the microwave. Leftovers store well. 

This is very simple and delicious! I've made it three times since learning of it maybe 5 weeks ago.

Halibut is a dense, meaty fish with a delicate flavor that responds well to light sauces.

It only takes a little while to cook this up and it requires just a few common ingredients, so it doesn't require much planning or preparation to have a nice dinner after work.

You can do this with sole as well.  

This vegetable side dish is easy to make and the presentation is pretty. Leftovers work fine as a cold salad, but reheating it can overcook the beans.

In Italian, you would call this Fagiolini Glassato al Sesamo.  

This was a special request from Lorna, reminiscing about her mom's kitchen. It's easy to make, requires only a few common ingredients, and it's not too sweet.

I liked this best with a cup of black coffee. I thought ice cream or whipped cream would be overdoing the dairy. 

This is baked at a pretty slow 300 degrees. A lot of ovens become less accurate at lower (and higher) temperatures, so it may take longer than you expect; it's a good idea to have an oven thermometer. 

This is a particularly nice way to serve that old favorite Spaghetti with White Clam Sauce. It's really easy, and attractive if you can get the fresh shellfish. 

The only trick to this is supplementing the dried angel-hair pasta and the canned clam sauce with some fresh shellfish for presentation (and nutrition, to be sure), and cooking ingredients for them. 

Of course, you can go "all in" and make the sauce entirely from scratch, and even make the pasta at home, and while you're at it, how about you go and dig those clams yourself? So this is the version for people who can't do all that, and you can feel free to put in any extra labor that works for you. (Don't forget to update the Preparation Time!)

This recipe is for Turbot (use Halibut on this end of the Atlantic) cooked in sparkling dry white wine and mushrooms. It's delicate and wonderful!

I was gifted a bottle of Anno Domini prosecco by a neighbor. We don't drink prosecco very often, but I had seen this recipe and couldn't resist. And the recipe needs just a cup, so there's enough left to serve two for dinner!

White button mushrooms or baby bellas are good with this. If you use mushrooms that are too flavorful, you overpower the sauce which is really quite nice if you let it be. 

This is the classic partner  to Pansotti, a traditional Ligurian ravioli filled with Preboggion (a mix of herbs of the Italian Riviera). We can't get that, so I had to use a store-bought spinach ravioli. But the Walnut Sauce is the star of the show... I saw a few recipes, and this one from the charming blog A Small Kitchen in Genoa looked really good. 

It was certainly easy enough. I made only two changes: she calls for fresh marjoram and I substituted the more readily available (in Massachusetts in April) Oregano, and she skips the common step of soaking the walnuts in boiling water (which I did, without the unnecessary step of rubbing off the skins). 

So we had this with spinach ravioli, and it's not Genoa, but it was still mighty tasty! 

When we explored Ireland in 2016, this was the most universal food we experienced. Everywhere we stayed, there was brown bread in the morning. There was some variation, but it seemed to be more a matter of creative license than anything regional; I remember that the brown bread in Derry in the north was very like what we had in Kinsale on the south coast.

I have seen many recipes for Irish Brown Bread; this one comes the closest to what we remember from that trip. 

Irish Brown Bread is not the same thing as Irish Whole Wheat Soda Bread. It's a little sweeter and moister, heavy enough to be substantial with a cup of tea for breakfast. 

This was an amazing discovery!

Not a discovery for the world, in the sense that Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin meant it when he said "The discovery of a new dish confers more happiness on humanity than the discovery of a new star." No, it was just luck on our part that it came out so well. 

I'm glad, too, that I thought to prepare it in a pan that could be brought to the table, so I could assemble it nicely while it was still cooking.  

I'd been researching Italian pasta and risotto dishes, and I kept bumping into mentions of the black squid ink pasta. I'd seen it in shops but never had a reason to buy it. 

But during the Great Coronavirus Lockdown of 2020, I was actively pursuing interesting pasta dishes, so one sunny Saturday afternoon we donned our face-masks and went to Lo Adoro on Rte 6a on Cape Cod. I've bought plenty of research materials there this spring, and I remembered seeing the black tagliatelle.

By the time we got home, I had assembled this Tagliatelle ai Frutti di Mare in my head for Friday, and it was wonderful! I hope you enjoy it. 

Potato Gnocchi with butter and sage is another easy and delicious marvel of Italian design.

This is one of those handy recipes that uses only a few common ingredients. The Potato gnocchi can be made ahead of time and frozen. 

You need fresh sage for this. If you don't have it in the garden, then you'll want to get some. The other three ingredients may already be in your pantry or refrigerator! 

I love fusilli! In many ways it's just another dried pasta, but its long, long corkscrews sure make dinner into something different.

I found a couple of recipes for fusilli or other pasta with mushrooms, so I tinkered a bit and came up with a winner.

One of the recipes that I saw included about a cup of chopped tomatoes. That might be good, but in my head I could taste the mushrooms coming together and decided to save the tomatoes for another day.

I think this would be great with any dry Piedmont or Tuscan red.