Italian

This classic Venetian dish typically uses bigoli, a whole-wheat pasta shaped like fat spaghetti. We like it with regular spaghetti, as well as with bucatini (also called perciatelli), a tubular, spaghetti-like shape. Toasted bread crumbs, or pangrattato in Italian, aren’t traditional, but they add a welcome crispness. We use Japanese-style panko for its light, airy texture and toast it in olive oil before mixing in chopped parsley and lemon zest.

The anchovies should not be rinsed before mincing, as this will wash away some flavor.

Our pasta cacio e uova, or pasta with cheese and eggs, comes together quickly. We gently heated crushed garlic cloves in lard while the water for the pasta came to a boil. And while the fat became infused with the garlic's flavor, we stirred together Pecorino Romano, Parmesan, eggs, salt, pepper, and parsley. We drained the pasta and tossed it with the oil, which provided a subtly sweet, nutty toasted garlic flavor, as well as 1 tablespoon of the pasta cooking water and the egg-and-cheese mixture.

For a deeply fruity granita with a light, crystalline texture, we blended fresh or frozen berries with enough water to form a silky puree and enough sugar for modest sweetness and to give the puree the proper consistency when frozen. When scraped, this granita yielded light, flaky ice crystals that lingered briefly on the palate for a chilling pause before melting in the mouth in a flood of fruity goodness. Lemon juice contributed acidity that brightened the fruit flavor.

To achieve the texture we found in Bari, Italy, the dough must be wet — so wet, in fact, it verges on a thick yet pourable batter. Resist the temptation to add more flour. Shaping such a sticky, high-hydration dough by hand is impossible. Instead, the dough is gently poured and scraped into the oiled baking pan; gravity settles it into an even layer.

If you have trouble finding Castelvetrano olives, substitute any large, meaty green olive.

One of our favorite variations of flatbread originated in Romagna, in northern Italy. There they throw together flour, salt, water or milk, and lard or olive oil to make a quick dough. After a short rest, the flatbread — a piadina — is cooked on a griddle or skillet. The cooked flatbreads then are stuffed with sweet or savory fillings and folded to make a sandwich.

During a recent trip to Italy, we learned that the way we make risotto — a low simmer, slowly adding liquid, constant stirring — isn’t how it’s done in Milan, a city famous for the dish. There, risotto comes together with blistering speed. The key is cooking at a vigorous pace over high heat, an approach that gets the dish on the table in less than half an hour. A simple homemade vegetable broth produces clean flavors in Saffron Risotto, a Milanese classic. A splash of balsamic vinegar brightens an otherwise earthy, herbaceous version scented with mushroom and sage.

This is the most minimalist eggplant Parmesan imaginable, really an eggplant gratin with tomatoes. (If memory serves me, that’s how they make it in Parma: no mozz, no meat.) You cook the eggplant in abundant oil. Yes, you can broil it or bake it, but I really think the taste of eggplant slices that have had oil boiled right through them is dreamy. Make a 15-minute tomato sauce of fresh or canned tomatoes, onion and olive oil, then grab a gratin dish and layer the eggplant, sauce and Parmesan. Do this two or three times, and that's it. Bake until it's bubbly and golden brown.

Pasta and a glass of wine are a natural pairing, but we were intrigued by the idea of spaghetti al vino rosso—a legendary dish in which pasta is actually cooked in red wine. The few recipes that exist fall into two categories: those in which a full bottle of wine is reduced to a glaze and then used to coat a pound of fully cooked spaghetti, and those in which parcooked spaghetti is finished in wine, risotto-style.

 I found the recipe upon which this is based in Clifford A. Wright’s first cookbook, “Cucina Paradiso: The Heavenly Food of Sicily.” And it is heavenly. I love the way raisins or currants and saffron introduce a sweet element into the savory and salty mix.

The affinity that cauliflower has with black olives is seen throughout the Mediterranean, from Tunisia to Sicily to Apulia to Greece. This simple gratin from Sicily is traditionally made with green cauliflower, but the result is equally delicious and almost as pretty with the easier-to-obtain white variety.