5 Ingredients or Fewer

This is the butter version of the Raw Olive Oil dressing for pasta on page 107. I make it at least four times a week, whenever Lorenzo and perhaps some of his cousins want “cheesy pasta” or gnocchi.

Though I’m reluctant to use out-of-season, commercially produced fresh tomatoes in a sauce, tomatoes from hothouses are a decent alternative. I sometimes dice up such a tomato for a quick skillet sauce, where the texture and color of the flesh are enjoyable, giving a dish acidity and freshness. A good example is the Sauce of Anchovies, Capers, and Fresh Tomatoes on page 91. Here is an even simpler one, for which a ripe market tomato will do, even in winter. Try this simple sauce with Shrimp and Tomato Ravioli (page 182), or tagliatelle, or capellini.

On occasion, I cook a pasta that I want to dress so simply that I do not even take down a skillet, especially if the pasta is a fresh pasta rich in flavor, such as all-egg pasta, chestnut pasta, walnut pasta, or whole-wheat pasta. For those days when you need simplicity in your life but still want flavor and elegance, this approach is perfect.

What’s wrong with zucchini in a sandwich? Since my mother made these all the time for my brother and me, I’ve always considered it a perfectly normal idea. So, when Joe and Tanya were little, I’d make them each a lovely sandwich of a crusty roll filled with egg-battered zucchini strips for lunch at school. Years later, they confessed to me that they were ashamed to take such a peculiar sandwich out of their lunchboxes—so they threw out the zucchini before other kids could see it! Now, of course, they love the combination of crisp bread and moist, flavorful zucchini, and regret all the empty rolls they had to swallow. I tell Olivia, Lorenzo, and Miles to eat whatever they like, and forget about what other kids think.

The enormous residual heat of polenta is sufficient, as the saying goes, “to cook an egg.” Do just that to make this treat for breakfast or brunch.

One of the mistakes I see many cooks making is automatically reaching for a can of chicken broth whenever a recipe calls for a bit of stock or a sauce needs an additional 1/3 cup of liquid. But the strong flavors of a broth—and the saltiness of canned broth in particular—can often change the flavor direction from where you want to go. And it’s an unnecessarily expensive and sometimes wasteful habit, if you only use a bit of the can and discard the rest. Instead, I encourage you to adopt one of my favorite thrifty kitchen practices: making your own simple vegetable broth when you are cooking, using it as a multi-purpose “moistening agent” for a host of dishes.

Simple fried skate was a supper treat when I was growing up, and it is still one of my family’s favorites of all fried seafoods. . . .

Golden-brown bread crumbs make a nice finishing touch for pasta dishes like this one—a light counterpoint of texture, taste, and color. Start with ordinary dried crumbs (see page 19) that have some larger bits in them, rather than crumbs that have been ground and sieved into a fine powder.

When garlic cloves are poached in water, the enzymes responsible for their harsh bite are neutralized, leaving them soft and mildly flavored. As a purée, they melt into a hot soup, lending it a lovely undertone of garlic and a velvet texture. Add this purée to any soup you like; I suggest the Cauliflower (page 66), the Parsnip (page 72), and the Frantoiana (page 62) in particular. And if you, or someone you cook for, find sautéed garlic too strong, use this poached purée to flavor sauces, dressings, roasts, and braises too.