of which I received a review copy. Of course, it’s a terrific book having been written by Colman Andrews with photographs by Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton. It is true to its title in that the recipes aren’t necessarily all the most obvious Italian dishes; although, there are several well-known favorites. Instead, it’s a collection of food found outside the main cities. It covers dishes found in every corner of the country including Sicily and Sardinia. There are a few dishes in the book that I know well and make frequently like Broccoli Rabe with Olive Oil and Sea Salt and Spaghetti al Pesto Trapanese. But, there are also some less well-known dishes like Spaghetti alla Callabrese made with ginger and mint, Scapece di Vasto which is like an escabeche of swordfish from the town of Vasto on the Adriatic coast, and a Sardinian Flatbread “Lasagna” made with pane carasau topped with poached eggs. There are soups for all seasons, antipasto, fresh and dried pasta dishes, flatbreads and tortas, poultry, meats, game, offal, salads and vegetables, and desserts. All of the recipes are woven together with stories about ingredients and their origin or arrival in Italy, various food festivals, tidbits about several of Andrews’ visits to different areas of the country, other writers’ observations on traveling in Italy, and more. From the Salads and Vegetables chapter, I was reminded of the great combination of fennel, orange, and onion, and I made that salad right away while blood oranges are still in season. A couple of pages later, I learned that black-eyed peas had been popular in Italy for at least a hundred years before they were grown in the southern US, and in Italian, they’re called fagioli con l’occhio. In Tuscany, they’re served simply dressed with olive oil. Next, I jumped to the Desserts and Confections chapter and tried the Limoncello Sorbetto. It’s a lovely, tart, icy, and light dessert. This is something I’ll be making often. While the sorbetto spent time in the freezer, I turned back to the Rice and Polenta chapter for the Polenta with Gorgonzola which is a dish Andrews remembers from a spot in Verona. It’s as easy to prepare as it sounds. A recipe of Basic Polenta was made and left to set up in a square pan. I made it the day before I planned to serve it and left it in the refrigerator overnight. Once set, big rectangles of polenta were cut, and they were seared in a hot pan before being placed on a baking sheet and topped with slices of gorgonzola. The cheese-topped polenta rectangles then went under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese melted and bubbled. Searing the polenta pieces gave them a toasted flavor and made the edges crisp. And, while you could use any cheese you prefer, the big flavor of gorgonzola was a great contrast to the mild polenta. 
When I was writing regularly about wine, I used to make an annual pilgrimage to Verona to attend Vinitaly, the massive international wine trade show. Almost every night during my stay, if there wasn’t an organized banquet somewhere that I had to attend, I would end up (along with many of my colleagues) at a place called Antica Bottega del Vino, on a little side street in the middle of town. (It is said that a century ago, there were literally hundreds of such places in the city.) As its name suggests, wine is the specialty; every available surface seems to be crowded with bottles—supposedly one hundred thousand of them in all—and scores of good wines are available by the glass. I rarely had a complete dinner (I had usually been snacking all day), but one dish I always looked forward to, sitting at a little wooden table out in the front part of the place, was a big slab of slightly charred fried polenta topped generously with just-melting gorgonzola. This is approximately how it was made.
Serves 4 to 6
Basic Polenta (please see separate recipe), cooled in a rectangle 1 inch/2.5 centimeters thick
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing and greasing
1 pound/500 grams gorgonzola dolce (young gorgonzola), chilled, then cut into slices 1/4 inch/6 millimeters thick
-Preheat the broiler/grill.
-Cut the polenta into 4 to 6 rectangles, each about 3 by 5 inches/7.5 by 12.5 centimeters.
-Brush the rectangles well with oil. Lightly grease a shallow, flameproof baking pan or dish large enough to hold the polenta rectangles in a single layer and set aside.
-Lightly grease a large grill pan (preferably) or cast-iron frying pan and heat over high heat until very hot. Working in batches if necessary, sear the polenta rectangles, turning once, until crisp and slightly charred on both sides, 2 to 3 minutes per side. As the polenta pieces are done, transfer them to the prepared baking pan, and immediately cover each slice generously with slices of gorgonzola so the cheese begins to melt from the heat of the polenta.
-When all the slices are cooked and covered with gorgonzola, put the baking pan under the broiler until the cheese turns golden, 1 to 2 minutes. Serve immediately.
Basic Polenta
There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there about how to cook polenta. The water should be boiling, or maybe simmering, or, no, at room temperature. The cornmeal should be added in a thin stream, or just poured steadily from a bowl. The polenta should be stirred constantly for an hour, or maybe an hour and a half . . . unless of course twenty minutes is sufficient. Or, hey, just forget about all that work and buy instant polenta. In the dozen years or so that I was at Saveur, the test kitchen must have made polenta thirty or forty times, using every different method imaginable. This technique, which is basically Marcella Hazan’s, gave the best results for the least amount of work—but it is still reasonably labor-intensive.
Serves 4 to 6
Salt
2 cups/320 grams coarse-grind white or yellow polenta
-Put 61/2 cups/1.5 liters water into a large, heavy-bottomed pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Stir in 1 tablespoon salt and reduce the heat to medium-low. When the water slows to a simmer, start adding the polenta in a very slow, steady stream, stirring it constantly with a long, strong wooden spoon. (“The stream of cornmeal must be so thin that you can see the individual grains,” counsels Hazan. “A good way to do it is to let a fistful of cornmeal run through nearly closed fingers.”) Continue adding the polenta and stirring until it is used up and then stir the polenta until it is thick and beginning to pull away from the sides of the pan, about 20 minutes.
-Serve the polenta immediately, or pour it out onto a wooden board or platter to cool for later use, shaping it into a rectangle about 1 inch/2.5 centimeters thick as it cools if you are going to fry it later.
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which has become my go-to source for dishes with great flavor and no meat. In the book, Castelluccio lentils are suggested, and the new bulk section at our Whole Foods offers a plethora of dried bean varieties but no Castelluccios. Instead, I found black, beluga lentils which are a cute, little size and nice, dark color and worked just as well for this. Another good option would be Puy lentils. Slow roasting tomatoes in a 250 degree F oven will take an hour and a half to two hours depending on the size of the tomatoes and the moisture content. The tomatoes were cut in half, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and sprinkled with thyme leaves and salt. Just keep checking in on them after about an hour and fifteen minutes until they've reached the semi-dried state you prefer. I roasted the tomatoes a couple of days in advance and stored them in a container in the refrigerator with the oil and vinegar scraped into the container with them. When I was ready to complete the dish, red onion was thinly sliced and left in a bowl with red wine vinegar and salt while everything else was prepped. The black beluga lentils were cooked in plain water for about fifteen to twenty minutes until just tender. They were drained and added to the red onion slices. Olive oil, minced garlic, and black pepper were added, and that was left until the lentils were cool. The original recipe calls for chervil, chives, and dill, but I used garlic chives from my garden and flat-leaf parsley. The chopped herbs were added to the cooled lentils and everything was tossed to combine. The roasted tomatoes along with chunks of Gorgonzola were added to the lentils as the dish was plated, and I served it on a bed of arugula leaves.![]()
On the last day of winter, it seemed like a good time to finish off the pumpkin ravioli that I had made weeks ago and left in the freezer. Back when winter started, I roasted a big, blue pumpkin that had the brightest orange flesh, puréed it, and put it to a couple of different uses. One of those uses was pumpkin-cinnamon rolls which are a big favorite of Kurt’s and mine. Obviously, the pumpkin was also used for ravioli, and some of it remains in a tub in the freezer. The filling for the pumpkin ravioli included puréed pumpkin, a scant amount of toasted bread crumbs, an egg, shredded parmigiana reggiano, and a few scrapes of nutmeg on the microplane. I made a standard pasta dough with flour and eggs, and mixed it in a food processor rather than by hand. (My pasta-making education came from Marcella Hazan via her excellent book Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, but I took the liberty of using the food processor to speed things up a bit.) I rolled out the pasta into sheets with a hand-cranked Imperia machine, and plopped the filling by the teaspoonful along the length of the sheets. Then, folded the sheets in half lengthwise over the filling and cut the ravioli with a fluted pastry wheel. The fresh pasta was boiled briefly and topped with browned butter, fried sage leaves, and a few curls of shaved parmigiana reggiano and was delectable. Kurt and I agreed that is our preferred way to prepare pumpkin ravioli, but it is very rich. It makes a great first course or primo. The remaining ravioli went into the freezer, and we enjoyed the browned butter and sage topping again a few weeks later. Last night, to use the rest of the ravioli before Spring arrived and made pumpkin seem out of place for dinner, I tried serving them with a gorgonzola sauce. I made a béchamel with finely chopped sage and melted gorgonzola and parmigiana reggiano into it. The ravioli were topped with the sauce and sprinkled with chopped hazelnuts and a little more parmigiana. This version of the ravioli was also delicious, and freezing the ravioli works fine, but nothing can beat the taste and texture of fresh pasta on the day it's made.
