Italian

The texture of the chocolate-amaretto custard is very delicate, so be sure to slice the pears very thin, so you can eat the dessert with a spoon.

You know how I feel about wasting food; everything in my kitchen gets used, even old bread. I’d like you to try this dish, so, even if you don’t find yourself with a leftover loaf of bread, buy a fresh one and let it dry overnight. Think of this side dish as a bread lasagna and serve it as a contorno to fish or meat. For a different and delicious brunch dish, top each serving with a poached or fried egg.

Thermometers—whether the instant-reading type used for meat, the large-dial models used to measure the temperature of oil for frying, or those used to test an oven’s temperature—are key tools to have in the kitchen. Why twice-fried potatoes? The first cooking, at a lower temperature, cooks the potato fully, and the second frying, at a higher temperature, makes a delicious crunchy crust. This comes in handy if you want to make the dish for company—the first frying can be done several hours in advance, and the second cooking takes only 5 minutes or so.

Make sure the radishes you choose are roughly the same size and have healthy-looking greens attached. If you find baby turnips in your supermarket or farmers’ market , try them the same way. These radishes go very well with the Veal Chops Stuffed with Taleggio and Broccoli on page 220 or the Chicken Breast Valdostana on page 271.

You can enjoy this dish slightly brothy, or lightly caramelized by continuing to simmer the fennel after it is tender, until all the stock evaporates. If you are serving the fennel with a grilled piece of fish or meat, keep it nice and juicy. On the other hand, if you are serving the fennel as a contorno with a piece of meat or fish that has its own sauce, then cook off the liquid and serve the fennel dry.

If you’re in the habit of throwing away broccoli stems, or even saving them for soup, I’d like you to try cooking broccoli this way. The stems are delicious, and if you peel them, they’ll cook in the same time as the florets. Nothing could be simpler than this way of preparing broccoli—after a quick boiling, just plunk the pieces into the hot oil and let them go till they’re tender. You can skip the boiling step and add the raw broccoli directly to the oil and garlic, keeping more of the nutrients intact. In that case, add some water to the skillet along with the broccoli, and add more from time to time as they cook.

You can chop the chard stems coarsely and cook them in the oil and garlic for a minute or two before adding the chard leaves, or you can save them to serve as a side dish for a separate meal. In that case, trim them, cut them into 3-inch lengths, and cook them for a minute or two in boiling salted water. Drain them, press them gently to flatten them out, then either sauté them in a little olive oil, or coat them with flour, eggs, and bread crumbs and fry them. Either way they are delicious, with a flavor like cardi or cardoons—a very Italian vegetable with a flavor that is a cross between artichokes and celery.

I love this prepared in individual baking dishes, as described in the note below. But I know most people don’t have six such dishes, so I’m offering the recipe prepared in a single large baking dish—I don’t want you to miss out on the wonderful flavor of fresh anchovies just because you don’t have small baking dishes. If you serve the anchovies from a large round dish, cut them into wedges, like a cake. Don’t be alarmed if the “slices” crumble a little; that is the nature of the dish. You can easily prepare this recipe for two people: decrease the amount of anchovies by two-thirds to 1/2 pound, but cut the remaining ingredients in half.

Wild-caught striped bass are the best for this recipe, but you can use fillets from any firm-fleshed ocean fish. Whatever fish you choose, the shape and thickness of the fillets is important. Each fillet should be about 1 1/2 inches thick and narrow enough so you can fit all six fillets in the pan with the sauce. If your pan isn’t large enough to hold all the fillets, cook the sauce first, then divide between two skillets of fillets. As with any dish, you can take this recipe in a lot of different directions. I sometimes prepare it using scallions in place of the onions, or black olives and capers in place of the green olives. Rather than add the olives and capers to the tomatoes, I like to cook them along with the onions for a minute or two to bring out their flavor. This “layering”of flavors is one of the little tricks we professional chefs use to get the most out of our ingredients.

Roasting the calamari in a cast-iron skillet, or any pan or casserole that can go directly over open flame, makes life easier. If you don’t have such a pan, roast the calamari in a regular baking dish, transfer them to a heated platter when they’re done, and pour the pan juices into a small saucepan to boil them down. For this recipe, bake the tentacles together with the bodies and reposition the tentacles in the opening of the body before serving.

I prefer olives with the pits—I think they have better flavor. Adding the olives directly to the oil after the garlic has browned will give you a more pronounced flavor of olives. If you like a milder flavor, add them to the sauce once the tomatoes have come to a boil. Baccalà has a tendency to curl up as it cooks. If yours does that, press on the fillets lightly with a metal spatula so they caramelize evenly. In order to keep the sauce light—as its name says—spoon in a little hot water from time to time as the sauce simmers.

Even though I call these “stuffed” tomatoes, don’t actually stuff the rice filling into the tomatoes. Fill them loosely or they will be dense and dry after baking. You can put the tops back on the tomatoes flat or prop them up at an angle. Rice cooked this way—with a little olive oil and bay leaves—is a good dish on its own. We used to feed it to children or adults when they were recovering from an upset stomach, but don’t limit it to that. In addition to stirring the fresh basil into the filling, shred as much as you like and scatter it over the tomatoes after you put them on a plate. Basil and tomato is a union made in heaven, and who am I to question heaven?

This recipe serves two, but it can easily be doubled or cut in half. Potatoes and eggs cooked like this are best when prepared from start to end in the same pan, so the potatoes stay crispy and hot. You might want to do one panful at a time the first time you try this recipe, but once you eat this, I guarantee it will become a favorite and soon you’ll get the knack of working two pans at once. Serve for breakfast, or as lunch with a salad.

This dish is excellent served as a main course or as a dressing for pasta. (Toss the pasta with the sauce and top the plates with shrimp.) It is also delicious spooned over hot Soft Polenta (page 346).