This is a full-flavored fall dish, bursting with mushroomy goodness.

It's not as rich and decadent as Barolo and Porcini Risotto, so you don't have to save it for a special occasion. It's great with big beef dishes and hearty dry red wine from the Piedmont!

The best flavor here comes from a mix of mushrooms, both fresh and dried, with their soaking liquor. There's a real boom in mushroom cultivation now, so it's much easier to find good fresh mushrooms of interesting varieties than it was even a few years ago. 

This was an invention of necessity another time that Lorna bought (expensive) halibut hoping for the Halibut in an Orange Sauce, only to learn that we had no good oranges in the house. 

So I followed the same technique, but I used herbs and cherry tomatoes and used herby dry vermouth instead of the sweet simple syrup. The orange-gold color in the sauce comes from the tomatoes; I saw that a few had burst, so I helped the others along. It was pretty and tasty too!

Here's a festive-looking all-seafood Italian cousin of the famous Spanish Paella. The mix of shellfish gives it a great visual presentation, and you get a lot of flavor because you can enjoy the flavors of the individual shellfish, and the taste as they mingle in the risotto. 

This is an Italian recipe, Nasello al Forno con Patate, that calls for hake, but I can't always find hake in Plymouth. It's a flaky white fish that cooks a lot like cod and haddock, so they allow us to make these Italian recipes with the local white fish.

This dish has delicate flavors that would go well with a Vermentino or a Gavi di Gavi white wine. It's a great recipe to know because if you have a piece of haddock or cod (or hake), you probably have the few remaining ingredients already in your kitchen.

I adapted this from a recipe for Orata, which we don't get in New England waters, but for which Cod substitutes pretty well. 

It's light and summery, and it's really quick and simple to prepare, too. It's especially nice with a light pasta on the side, with no sauce except what's in the fish dish. 

I saw this on menus all over Italy. I got the recipe from The Silver Spoon Cookbook, but I know that it was also a little different across that long country. 

The main thing is that the Silver Spoon recipe calls for fresh Porcini mushrooms, which are not easy to come by in New England, but I had them with different mushrooms in different places. 

I made this one with Baby Bellas, mostly to see if the technique would have any tricks. It is pretty easy, it just cooks a long time; now I want to try it with a variety of other mushrooms!

This simple dish is known in Sicily as Pasta alla Milanese, or "pasta for the people of Milan". That's because Milan is well inland, so Sicilians who went north for work could not get the fresh fish that features so prominently in Sicilian cuisine, so they had to used preserved sardines with their pasta.

This is a very simple dish, but the flavor is unique and the people who tried it all liked it. I suppose it helps the poor homesick Sicilians of Milan! 

You can make this with fresh artichokes, but canned artichoke hearts in water (not marinated) make this an easy work-night option, and a nice change if you want something without tomatoes. I find this simple dish very summery!

You can really have this ready in just the time it takes to cook the pasta, so you can save some time if you don't boil more water than you need. 

This is a great summer dish, light and easy enough to make after work. The contrast of the crunchy-buttery almonds and the tender sole is a delight. There's really not much to it, but with good ingredients the result is delicious!

We had this for a weeknight dinner with just a pasta dish, but I'd happily serve it to company with The Sultan's Onions and Molise Celery or Genoese Spinach, and a nice chilled Gavi di Gavi wine, or a small glass of cold dry vermouth (I know that's good match because that's what I had while cooking it!). 

I first found this exquisite rice, known in Italy as riso venere nero,  in Portland, but now I can get it at Lo Adoro on Route 6a in Sandwich, much closer to home! 

This is attractive for a fancy dinner, and it has great flavor that pairs well with light dishes, especially seafood.

But it's tricky to cook; it's best to soak the rice first for at leat half an hour, longer is OK. Sometimes I set it out in the morning, that night it cooks up fine.

This is not a risotto rice. You cook it up more or less like white rice, but be sure to read the Instructions below. 

I have seen recipes that say to cook it like pasta in a large surplus of water, but it still has to cook a long time and you have to keep checking it; this method is easier to cook and easier for timing when you are making a fancy dinner.  

Some recipes here include a reference to "great single-estate extra-virgin olive oil" that I get from Olioveto - here are some useful thoughts on the matter for the foodie:

• Not all "extra-virgin olive oil" is olive oil at all, and most of it is not Italian. The Mafia in Sicily and the more powerful 'Ndrangheta in Calabria have controlled and ruined that market. 
• Most EVOO comes from Spain, and a lot from Greece, too. They are good products. They may say Italian; you can take it up with the mob. If you care about truth in what you buy, buy from a reputable dealer.
• There's no need to cook with cold-pressed EVOO. It was cold-pressed for a reason - the heat destroys some of the compounds that make it special. Whole Foods has a dissertation on the subject here. You can cook with higher-acidity, much cheaper pomace olive oil and get most of the monounsaturated healthy stuff and save some serious shekels. 

The people who sell the single-estate oils know the business and you get what you pay (a lot) for. They are pressed from single-varieties or proprietary blends, like wines, and like wines they reflect the source olives, the terroir, and the season, not to mention the skill of the maker.

Here's a very simple, flavorful way to bring a little-used vegetable into play with any rich heavy main course. The dripping-wet endives are braised in their own liquid in olive oil flavored with garlic and mint. Cooking reduces the natural bitterness of the endive without eliminating it completely.

Indivie Intere "a Crudo" are traditionally served with roasts, especially with veal, but they will do well with any heavy main course where cooked bitter greens do well. The bitterness helps to cut the unctuousness of the fat in such dishes. 

I think this is likely to fight with a red wine that has any tannins in it; from that perspective the bitterness serves the purpose of the tannins in the wine. I might serve this when the best wines of the dinner are done and we're on to something softer, or maybe with a white wine. 

I show this on a bed of Black Venus Rice, but I bet it would be a bang-up dynamic pairing with the Gorgonzola Risotto! 

This pretty golden riff on the classic Sicilian Pasta con Sarde has plenty of goodness.

Pasta con le Sarde a Mare is literally "Pasta with the sardines (still) in the sea" - it contains no sardines at all! 

It does have tender fennel, saffron, golden raisins, pine nuts, and other foodie goodness, so it's totally delicious, especially if you didn't have your heart set on those sardines.

It uses anchovies for a salty marine flavor, but if you used a teaspoon of salt instead then this would be a vegetarian dish. 

This pasta-with-mushrooms dish is different from the fusilli recipe, a little more tricky to make and I think more interesting. 

The original recipe uses dried and fresh porcini mushrooms, but the fresh ones are hard to get here so I used button mushrooms and the they they are cooked they were still memorably delicious. 

Bucatini is a long round pasta somewhat like a fat spaghetti. You could substitute spaghetti or linguini. 

Ragù is a generic word for sauce, except that for a lot of people the only sauce they mean is this super-classic meat sauce from Bologna. It's very rich, but well-balanced, and it's delicious with many wines.

This is usually served in generous amounts on small quantities of broad flat pasta like a tagliatelle. 

This uses a million ingredients and it takes some time to prepare, but you can easily double or triple the recipe and freeze the extra. Don't cut corners on the ingredients; they are all here for a reason, and together they make a great harmony of flavors. After all, if you were staging an opera and had no tenor, you wouldn't substitute a baritone and figure nobody will notice!

This piquant Lombard classic is best used as a side dish. The creamy-smooth risotto packs a pungent punch of Gorgonzola deliciousness, a little of which goes a long way.

This is a good side dish for a strongly flavored main course of beef or turkey, and with vegetable sides that will hold their own.  

If you want to serve this as a bigger part of the meal, then you may want something sweet to balance it; I think sliced pear or apple would go very well with this. 

This traditional Genoese recipe is fun and very easy.

Mandilli de Saea means "silk handkerchiefs", and the name comes from the very simple nature of the pasta: squares of very thinly rolled fresh pasta. Being so thin and fresh, they cook up in no time! These are best with a fresh-made Genoese basil pesto made with the best ingredients that you can get.

The Italian recipe that I have for this calls for porgy, but I can't get porgy so I used halibut and it came out great.

Fresh fennel is a great flavor to go with white fish. That's good, because there aren't many other flavors here to work with so the match has to be a great one! 

This is another of those recipes that goes great with pasta because you need a pot of boiling water anyway. 

This is totally decadent dish from the Piedmont region is suitable for most American vegetarian diners. It's expensive, so be sure to use top-shelf ingredients throughout. 

Unlike other mushroom risottos, this one uses only dried authentic porcini mushrooms. The Barolo wine is a luxury product, too, but you need just a cup for the risotto so you can save the rest for the table. 

Sedano alla Molisana is a simple and delicious preparation of a vegetable that is sadly underappreciated in American kitchens: the humble celery. The trick that turns it from watery crunchy diet "food" into something worth serving to company is easy: you boil it first for 10 minutes! That means it's a great side dish if you are cooking pasta for supper because you already have a pot of boiling water, just be sure to cook the celery first!

After that, it's just a matter of good, common ingredients. You don't even need much patience for this one! 

I think any Genoese recipe is bound to be interesting, and this simple spinaci alla genovese recipe doesn't disappoint. For starters, it includes golden raisins and anchovies!

That's not as weird as it sounds. A lot of Italian cooking uses anchovies as a seasoning, in small quantities; it's way more interesting than salt! And the golden raisins are also used in a lot of northern Italian recipes, along with pine nuts and various spices, all thanks to the region's medieval dominance of Mediterranean sea trade from the Orient. Venetian cuisine is equally fascinating.

 

Here is a nice, easy summer dish to go with grilled meats. It's essentially just beans with sage. 

The name means "beans like little birds" and nobody is really sure where the little birds come in, except that the seasonings are typical of those used in poultry dishes. 

You can optionally add tomatoes, but I like these with just the delicate flavors presented here along with some grilled meat or maybe a strong-flavored fish like swordfish or salmon.

You can use canned beans, but you get better flavor if you use the dried beans and refresh them yourself, as described here. 

Tuna is popular in Sicily; it's used in this classic Sicilian dish, usually made with a long pasta like spaghetti, or the bucatini shown here, dressed with green olives. 

This is an easy recipe that comes together quickly so it's suitable for a weeknight after work.  

You don't use BumbleBee fancy white albacore tuna for this, but the more tender Italian preserved tuna belly in olive oil that we usually see in glass jars. You can always find it in an Italian market and sometimes in better supermarkets. 

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.