Mario Batali

italian food, vegetarian recipes, pasta recipes, dinner, main course, first course, high fiber recipes, tomato recipes, garlic recipes, red pepper flake recipes, cheese recipes, pecorino recipes, parmesan recipes, herb recipes, basil recipes, cooking for 2, valentines day food, summer food

Our dough is a little wetter than a standard bread dough, but this style produces the best results with our method of cooking: we use a hot griddle to parcook the pizza crusts. Our pan of choice is my own enameled cast-iron pizza griddle, but you can also use a 10-inch enameled cast-iron frying or grilling pan or a smooth cast-iron pancake griddle.

Tinseltown's finest flock here for classic Italian meals from chefs Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton. This dish delivers molto flavor for few calories, plus a third of your daily iron needs.

The tradition of Sicilian cooking is well documented in Anna Tasca Lanza’s works, and she is the zen mistress of all of the island’s fascinating food lore. Her school at Regaleali winery is one of the best I have visited and it was an experience to cook shoulder to shoulder with a modern national treasure. This is a variation on a dish from her first book, Flavors of Sicily.

Eel can be a tough sell, until you have tried it. In Italy, however, it appears in a magnificent and succulent dish on almost every table during Christmas week, particularly on La Vigilia, Christmas Eve, when it is perhaps the most traditional dish of all. The many fish dishes served that night.

Cooking cruciferous vegetables without boiling them, as in this recipe, seems to make them more fragrant and heady—just the way the robust Romans like their food.

In Italy, this recipe is a classic holiday dish. For Christmas Eve, it would generally be served at room temperature, as part of a buffet.

A plate of these sweet bites on the coffee table means only one thing: Christmas week has arrived. I have modified my original recipe to make a softer, wetter dough, which makes these a little less crisp, but the dough is a lot easier to work with.

A simple white wine, garlic, and parsley sauce is all that's needed to complement the fresh shellfish in this Italian pasta dish.

A light sauce of white wine and tomatoes lets the seafood shine in this iconic Italian pasta dish.

There are several secrets to perfect, crisp cannoli:

1). You need the right proportion of filling to shell. In America, cannoli are often too large, with too much filling. These are tiny and delicate, perfect for eating in just a couple of bites.

2). Use high-quality ingredients. Sheep's-milk ricotta is the most traditional, but good fresh cow's-milk ricotta will work fine as well. Be sure to drain it for an hour to avoid watering down the filling. Good-quality candied orange peel is important as well. If you can't find any that's fresh and plump, substitute freshly grated orange zest.

3). Most importantly, don't fill the shells until you're ready to serve them. Both the filling and the shells can be made one day ahead, but to avoid soggy shells, don't pipe the filling into them until the last minute.

If you don't have a pastry bag, a one-gallon freezer bag with the end snipped off can be used to pipe the filling.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text are from Mario Batali's book Italian Grilling. Reprinted with permission by Ecco. All rights reserved.

This was one of the first dishes I put on the menu at my restaurant Pó... a long, long time ago. You can vary it by using different greens, such as spicy young watercress, or other cheeses, including sheep's-milk cheese, semi-soft or aged. The beauty of the dish lies in the seemingly incongruous marriage of anchovies and mushrooms: anchovies plus mushrooms equals steak.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are adapted from Molto Italiano by Mario Batali. It's part of a special menu created by Lidia Bastianich and Mario Batali for Epicurious's Wine.Dine.Donate program.

Scarola alle Acciughe

There are basically two ways of cooking greens: the long, slow method, and this one, where much of their water content is still present, leaving the leaves with a definite chew.

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are adapted from Molto Italiano by Mario Batali. It's part of a special menu created by Lidia Bastianich and Mario Batali for Epicurious's Wine.Dine.Donate program.

Insalata Caprese Invernale

I love this winter version of the Neapolitan classic because it is very easy to do, and the slow-roasted tomatoes are better than any regular tomatoes for all but about three months of the year. The extra pesto keeps well in the fridge for two weeks, provided you cover the top with a half-inch of extra-virgin olive oil.

These are big shrimp, the ones that ate the other shrimp. When they opened the cage door after the death match, these are the shrimp that walked out of the ring.

Don't turn your back on the grill while you're cooking these — someone's liable to abscond with them.

It's best to have a napkin handy when eating these crunchy chocolate cookies — the confectioners-sugar coating can get messy. After Catherine Rieger of Martinez, California, found the recipe in The Babbo Cookbook, the cookies became a staple in her home.

This "red sauce meets Guido in Little Italy" classic has much more to do with the clams than what you may be used to eating. Note that the bread crumbs here are fresh—that is to say, made only from today's bread, not from day-old bread (and definitely not the kind that comes in a can).

One bite of this exemplary antipasto entirely changed the way I thought about Italian cooking—and cooking in general. So Zen-like in their elegance and simplicity, so little and yet so much said, these delicious little dreamboats truly capture the dreamlike state of the Amalfi coast and the cooking that defines it.

The cured anchovies will keep in the refrigerator for up to one week.