Garlic

In Italy, it is called bruschetta, fett’unta, and by various names in different regions, but the basic concept is that bread, fresh or old, is grilled or toasted and then brushed with olive oil and rubbed with fresh garlic. Toppings are optional, and surely seasonal. In the United States, this Italian custom took on different versions and became garlic bread. Garlic bread was an open loaf of Italian bread brushed with butter or oil and lots of chopped garlic, sprinkled with dry oregano, and grilled or baked. I recall liking the grilled and warm bread from my Italian American restaurant visits, but the garlic was always too much for me. I must say that now, in most restaurants, the grilling and toasting of bread has come full-circle, and bruschetta as well as garlic bread graces the table. Here are three versions of the garlic bread made with the Italian American tradition in mind. Just keep a handle on the garlic.

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.

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.

Salmoriglio, a traditional sauce for seafood, is nothing more than a dressing of olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, salt, peperoncino, and fresh parsley. There’s nothing to it—except remembering to make it ahead, so the garlic and pepper infuse the oil.

Here’s an uncommon preparation for one of the most common and popular cuts of meat in the market: thin-cut lamb shoulder chops. They’re inexpensive, wide, and meaty. Barely 1/2 inch thick, they look like they’ll cook in a minute, perfect for fast family suppers. But shoulder chops also have lots of cartilage and gristle, and usually two sets of bones, which call for slow cooking (and the meat is tougher than it looks). Though it is a thin chop, it will take about 20 minutes to cook. Get out the big skillet to caramelize the meat and flavoring agents, and then bring everything together in a superb sauce. With surprising ingredients, this is a good recipe to add to your growing repertoire of aglio e olio base sauces. Also, as the sauce reduces, it actually braises the chops for a few minutes, which tenderizes the meat a bit, although it will still be chewy (which I love). What is surprising about the sauce? In addition to my usual aglio, olio, e peperoncino, I drop a couple of chopped anchovy fillets into the pan, where they quickly disintegrate. As part of the sauce, their flavor has a subtle presence but a remarkable impact: taste a bit of lamb by itself, then a morsel with sauce, and you’ll see. Here is delicious evidence that the anchovy is a potent source of umami—the amino acid that makes other foods taste better. You can omit the anchovies entirely, but I hope you’ll give this food synergy a try: if you’re doubtful, use just one fillet of anchovy. We all need to be adventurous!

Starting with a base of garlic and olive oil, similar to many of my pasta sauces, you build layers of flavor, toasting the garlic, peperoncino, and capers on the pan bottom, then draw the components together with broth and reduce the liquid to perfect saucing consistency. It’s all done in less than 15 minutes. The added challenge here is that you must cook six plump chicken breasts to perfection, in the same pan, in the same short time. The chicken takes up most of the room, so the hot spots will be harder to find. More important, you need to control the heat and timing with care: the chicken has to caramelize lightly at first, then, as the sauce comes up around it, cook to doneness in a couple of minutes of high-heat braising. You’ll be thickening the sauce with bread crumbs in the exciting finale too—so it’s good to have all the ingredients ready to go. Quick, tasty, requiring little effort, this is the kind of cooking I love to do for my family. I guarantee that after you’ve served this amazingly moist chicken and superb sauce to your family they’ll be requesting it often.

It may scare some of you, but garlic lovers will be excited about transforming 1 whole cup of raw garlic cloves into 1 cup of creamy garlic sauce. But don’t be intimidated: this simple reduction of garlic in a pan of milk creates a sauce that is surprisingly mild—though unmistakably garlicky. And if the whole-cup idea seems too extreme for you, despite my assurance, by all means make this with just 1/2 cup of cloves. At full or half strength, this is delicious with all sorts of vegetables—use it warm with hot vegetables and cold with crudités.

This way of cooking broccoli opens a whole new world of flavors for one of the most available vegetables. Make a medley in the skillet by cooking cauliflower, zucchini, or other cut-up vegetables at the same time. And even reluctant vegetable eaters (we have a few in my family) find broccoli irresistible with my Creamy Garlic Sauce.

This is a fine fast sauce for Shrimp and Tomato Ravioli and Simple Ricotta Ravioli (preceding recipes) as well as for Potato, Leek, and Bacon Ravioli (page 186). Make the sauce just before the ravioli come out of the pot, for the freshest taste. You should definitely peel the tomatoes for this: see my method on page 261.

Marinara is my quintessential anytime tomato sauce. I can start it when the pasta water goes on the stove and it will be ready when the pasta is just cooked. Yet, in its short cooking time, it develops such fine flavor and pleasing consistency that you may well want to make a double batch—using some right away and freezing the rest for suppers to come. The beauty of this marinara sauce is that it has a freshness, acidity, and simplicity of taste, in contrast to the complexity and mellowness of the long-cooking tomato sauce that follows. This recipe for marinara includes lots of fresh basil, which I keep in the house at all times, now that it is available in local supermarkets year-round. I cook a whole basil stalk (or a handful of big sprigs with many leaves attached) submerged in the tomatoes to get all the herb flavor. Then I remove these and finish the sauce and pasta with fresh shredded leaves, giving it another layer of fresh-basil taste. (If you are freezing some of the sauce, by the way, you can wait until you’re cooking with it to add the fresh-basil garnish.) This sauce can be your base for cooking any fish fillet, chicken breast, pork fillet, or veal scaloppini. Sear any of these in a pan, add some marinara sauce, season with your favorite herbs, and let it perk for a few minutes—you’ll have yourself a good dish.

Small shrimp make a lovely addition to skillet sauces, because they cook so quickly, barely 2 minutes in the skillet. The trick is to make sure that you don’t overcook the shrimp. If you can, start your pasta before the sauce, so they finish at the same time. But if your pasta isn’t ready when the shrimp and sauce are, take the skillet off the heat.

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.

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.

You can turn this soup into a main course by adding pieces of cooked chicken. Small shrimp are another delicious enhancement: cut about 1/2 pound of shelled, cleaned shrimp into 1-inch pieces, and stir them into the pot when the zucchini is tender. Remove from the stove and let the shrimp cook in the residual heat.