5 Ingredients or Fewer

Corn is a nice addition to minestra—it adds texture and sweetness. It is also a good addition to other vegetable soups, such as fresh fennel, zucchini, or chicory and white bean.

Cook rice just before serving to get the consistency of soup you like: 1/4 cup of rice per quart of base for a lighter minestra, and up to 1/2 cup of rice for a hefty and hearty minestra.

Both lentils and pasta absorb liquid from the soup base, so add water from the beginning and more during cooking to get the consistency you like.

Try this with poached garlic purée too.

Winter squash and chestnuts are a wonderful combination with this base, adding nutty and sweet flavors and hearty texture. Any firm winter squash is suitable. Use fresh chestnuts or packaged peeled chestnuts (sold frozen or freeze-dried). If using fresh chestnuts, see my peeling method below.

Poached garlic lends its lovely flavor to the soup, and then everything gets a quick whirl in the food processor, producing a light, creamy soup—without cream. Add some crunch to this with Cheesy Crostini (page 60).

This soup is nice without the addition of garlic purée, marvelous with it. If you like, add short shreds of Savoy cabbage in place of some of the cauliflower, or make Savoy-cabbage soup with poached garlic purée instead.

You can make a cup or a gallon of delicious soup by cooking rice in the soup base: multiply or divide this formula as needed. If you like the lighter consistency, use 1/4 cup of uncooked rice per quart of base; for a denser soup, use 1/3 cup. Don’t start cooking the rice more than 15 minutes before serving, though, since the grains continue to expand and absorb broth even off the heat. Serve immediately after the rice is cooked.

This is a traditional Tuscan soup from the area of Arezzo, made with bread grilled over an open fire and virgin olive oil, unfiltered, straight from the press—the frantoio. Believe me, a pot of beans never tasted this good. As bread is a principal ingredient here, use one with fine flavor, preferably an artisan-baked loaf that has great crust and an airy crumb with lots of holes. Old bread—pane vecchio—is best, because it is already dry, but day-old or even fresh bread can be used.

Make soup with any of the greens (and reds) in the chicory-endive family, including the various kinds of radicchio now in the markets, escarole, curly endive (or frisée), or Belgian endive, as well as unrelated leafy vegetables such as Swiss chard, spinach, or arugula. The procedure is the same, though cooking times will vary.

It is so simple to transform a hard, homely celery root into a lovely salad with delicate taste and texture. Just drop the big root—a softball-sized unpeeled round—into a big pot of water, and let it cook for an hour or more. This technique retains and mellows the root’s wonderful flavor, and makes it easy to peel and cut it up too. Dress this simply, or take the salad in a different direction (see variations).

At my grandma’s house, we used to have this kind of salad many a time, with a slice of homemade bread and some good cheese, for supper.

Raw spinach salad can be delicious, but, in my opinion, a brief cooking—really just a dip in boiling water—brings out the vegetable’s best qualities. Use really young, tender spinach for this salad. It’s easy to find baby spinach in plastic packs these days, but whenever you can—especially in springtime—buy clusters of tender leaves with tiny reddish stems joined at the roots, as they were plucked from the earth. Trim only the hairy tip of the roots, and cook the leaves and stems still together. Make sure you wash them several times, since dirt lodges between the stems.

This beautiful salad really depends on good ingredients: small firm beets with fresh unblemished greens still attached; a crisp tart apple or perhaps ripe fresh peaches or Black Mission figs; and aged goat cheese with a crumbly consistency. Roasting the beets to intensify the sweetness is also a key to the best salad.

Celery is often underappreciated as a principal salad ingredient. The inner stalks of the head have a wonderful freshness, flavor, and delicacy when thinly sliced. Here I’ve paired them with fresh baby artichoke slices in a salad with lots of bright, subtle flavors and all kinds of crunch. Shards of hard cheese—either Parmigiano-Reggiano or Grana Padano—lend even more complexity to the mix. Use only firm and very small artichokes for this: they should feel tight and almost squeak when you squeeze them, and they should have no choke.

Serve this colorful and delicious salad as a first course by itself, with other antipasti, or with grilled foods. You can use this low-fat method of preparing eggplant in other dishes too. I top it with shavings of ricotta salata (ricotta that has been salted and dried in a small round cheese form for about 4 weeks).

You may have heard me describe the extraordinary qualities of an authentic aceto balsamico tradizionale—how it takes 20 years of careful concentration to develop its intense flavors; how a few drops make a dish taste magical; and how the price of a tiny bottle has caused many unsuspecting tourists to faint! Here, though, is a more reasonable way to bring some of the intensity and complexity of the greatest balsamic vinegar to everyday dishes: reduce a bottle of the affordable commerciale grade of balsamic to a thick syrup. Don’t look for the cheapest “balsamic” on supermarket shelves; look for a vinegar from a reputable company, produced in Italy—and expect to pay $8 to $10 for a pint. I use this condiment on a range of dishes (and in numerous recipes throughout the book), as a thick sauce to drizzle on meats and vegetables and, in a somewhat thinner state, as a glaze on roasts. As you’ll see in the recipe, the vinegar reduces with added honey and bay leaf, but you can give it other flavor notes. I vary these with the dish I intend to dress: for vegetables I add whole cloves; for meat and poultry I add rosemary; for fish I add thyme. The basic formula will provide you with syrup for drizzling on a half-dozen dishes, maybe more. It will keep forever in the refrigerator, but I’m sure you’ll use it up quicker than that!

This might be considered a salad, but it is a wonderful stuzzichino (something to nibble on). Slow roasting intensifies the flavor of olives and gives them an unusual yet delightful crunch. Tossed with vinegar-poached pearl onions, they make a lively and beautiful salad-condiment. Serve this as an antipasto with cured meats and cheeses, or with grilled meats and fish. It is also a great garnish for sandwiches or with slices of grilled bread. All you need is a plate, a fork, and a glass of good red wine.