Onion

Texture is a very important part of the gustatory pleasures of tripe. Tripe should be soft and yet resilient; you do not want it mushy. In this recipe, as I do when making many long-simmered sauces, I keep a pot of hot water near the tripe as it simmers. From time to time, I check the tripe, ladling in water if the sauce has cooked down and some of the tripe isn’t covered. At the end of cooking, there should be enough sauce so the tripe is nice and juicy but not watery.

When searing meats or fish, the size of the skillet is important. A roomy skillet will retain more heat after you add things to it, and will climb back to searing temperature much more quickly than a smaller skillet. Once you put the slices of liver in the pan, let them sit undisturbed, giving them a chance to form a caramelized crust. If you like your liver rare or medium-rare, as I do, the second side should always cook less than the first—about half the time. If you like more well-done meats, reduce the heat under the pan after you have flipped the meat over to prevent it from scorching, then cook it to your liking. Salt draws liquids and juices from meats, and that is why I season the liver after it is cooked.

This sauce is traditionally simmered for hours, until a finger’s width of oil floats on top. Typically that oil was then reincorporated into the sauce. In true Italian family style, pass platters of the meat with some sauce spooned over them, and bowls of pasta dressed with the sauce around the table. Buon appetito.

There is not much to peel in celery, just the strings that run along the ribs that can be annoying to eat. To remove them, I take a peeler and lightly run it along the back of the celery rib. Another way to remove them is with a paring knife. When you are trimming the base or the top of the stalk, don’t just chop away, but gently hold the stalk in your hands and cut from the inside of the stalk to the outside without cutting all the way through. Just before finishing the cut, pull the knife toward you and the strings should peel off down the length of the stalk.

This classic and delectable pasta dish originated in the region of Abruzzi, in the little town of Amatrice, northeast of Rome, where it was traditionally prepared without tomatoes. But it is the Roman version of pasta all’amatriciana, with tomatoes, that I share with you here—the version that is best known and deservedly popular. Lots of onions; chips of guanciale (cured pork cheek, now available in the United States, see Sources, page 340), pancetta, or bacon; and San Marzano tomatoes are the essential elements of the sauce, Roma style. Note that the onions are first softened in water, before olive oil is added to the pan—a traditional but unusual step that is said to make the onions sweeter. The standard pasta used is bucatini or perciatelli (spaghetti are only tolerated). The long, dry strands of perciatelli resemble very thick spaghetti but are hollow like a drinking straw. When cooked, they are wild and wiggly, so you might be tempted to cut them. Do not—once you’ve got them on your fork, they’re delicious and fun to eat. It is quite all right to slurp them. Indeed, as kids we would suck them in so fast that the end of the noodle would whip us in the nose, splattering sauce all over our faces. What a wonderful memory!

You can buy all-purpose Asian sauces at the grocery store, but most of them are loaded with sugar and fat. This one—with lots of ginger and garlic and just a little bit of oil—is very flavorful.

This aromatic puree is designed to be a base ingredient and is a great way to build flavor and texture without adding fat. It eliminates the need to add a lot of butter and cream to Macaroni and Cheese with a Crusty Crunch (page 174), for instance. You can stir it into just about any sauce or soup for a fat-free flavor punch.

The Japanese spin buckwheat flour into culinary gold with their rich, flavorful soba noodles. Buckwheat flour has many health benefits, including being much richer in antioxidants than wheat pasta. If you have a choice, buy inaka or “country” soba, because it’s made entirely from whole, unrefined buckwheat—which means more fiber. Traditionally, soba is served hot in a broth or cold with a sweetened soy dipping sauce called tsuyu. This simplified version is flavored with sesame, an American favorite.

Goulash is a Hungarian stew made from cuts of beef that contain lots of collagen, which melts during cooking and thickens the liquid in which it’s cooked. That’s why this recipe calls for beef shank: it’s rich and meaty but doesn’t have the fat content of other cuts of beef, such as chuck. Paprika and onions are the other ingredients that give this dish its signature taste. A little yogurt to finish (instead of the traditional sour cream) provides additional richness without driving up the calorie count.

In Mexico, tacos are small, fresh, and simply prepared. I once had a taco al pastor there that was mind-bendingly good, and it had all of three ingredients! Somehow, when the taco got to the United States, it morphed into double-crust, Taco Bell Beef Supreme Chalupa with sour-cream-out-of-a-caulking-gun madness. Here I do my best to honor the Americanized taco everyone seems to love, while bringing some traditional flavors into the picture.

I adore risotto. It is as much fun to make and serve as it is to eat. I have spent most of my career learning how to perfect it—and much of my life eating it. There are few foods that make people moan as much as a beautifully prepared risotto does. (Remember Seinfeld?) Two things make it so delicious: the starch that is released from the rice during the slow and careful cooking process, and the butter and cheese we add to it. Unfortunately, for a few pleasurable moments on the lips, it’s a terror for the hips, thanks to the fat and carb content. This rice-less risotto uses something called TVP, or textured vegetable protein. It’s a high-fiber, high-protein soy product. It’s great both raw and cooked, and it has far fewer carbs than white rice.

The Italian name for this salad is insalata caprese, and it’s a shining example of the brilliance of Italian cuisine: a few fresh, simple ingredients at the peak of their season combined to produce exceptionally complex flavors. It hails from Capri, a small island off the coast of Naples in the region of Campagna, where my family comes from. Buy only the best mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, and olive oil you can find to make this salad. It may be naturally fresh and healthful, but I have kept fat and calories to a minimum by keeping the olive oil to a minimum—only 1 tablespoon for 4 servings.

Who doesn’t love a big thick chunk of iceberg lettuce with bacon and blue cheese dressing alongside a juicy cowboy-cut ribeye? It’s one of my favorite steakhouse meals. Problem is, at 700-plus calories and more than 80 grams of fat—for the salad alone!—it’s a very bad bargain. Thankfully, the availability of reduced-fat blue cheese means you don’t have to choose between the steak and the salad.

If ever there was a dynamic duo of destructive caloric forces, cheese and potatoes is it. But they taste sooo good together, we dive in anyway. This potato-free cheese and “potato” soup reunites the duo but tames them to a mere shadow of their former fatness.

French onion soup began to show up on restaurant menus in the 1960s, when America’s interest in French food was piqued by Julia Child. Onions have tremendous nutritional value and have been shown to aid in preventing and treating both cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancer. Though a bowl of French onion soup is full of great things, it also has a fair amount of fat. This recipe calls for reduced-fat Swiss and little to no fat in the general preparation, which trimmed fat and calories by about one-third and one half, respectively.