Makes about 3 cups

Ingredients:

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Serves 4

Ingredients:

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This punchy, herbaceous sauce has the perfect balance of fresh parsley and oregano, with a blast of garlic, chilies and cracked black pepper, bathed in extra virgin olive oil and a splash of red wine vinegar. Make a large batch and store in the refrigerator to make any dish more special. For a lovely companion, try it spooned over my Marinated Skirt Steak.

Makes about 3 cups

Ingredients:

• 2 cups finely chopped Italian parsley

• 3 tablespoons finely chopped oregano (or 1 tablespoon dried oregano)

• 3 cloves garlic, minced

• 1-2 Fresno chilies (or jalapeno), seeded and finely diced

• 1 cup extra virgin olive oil

• 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

• 1 tablespoon sea salt

• 2 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper

Combine all ingredients in a glass container and stir to combine. Cover and store in refrigerator up to a week.

If you are new to cooking steaks, or intimidated by cooking steak, skirt is a great starter-steak. The preparation is fast! The cooking method is forgiving! Resting the meat is the hardest part (patience!), and then I will teach you to cut against the grain and wait for the applause.

Skirt steak is a long, thin steak with an open grain pattern that soaks up marinade and creates a beautiful char when grilled or pan-seared. When selecting skirt steak, ask for the butcher’s cut outside skirt steak, which is far more tender than the flatter, thinner inside skirt steak. The outer skirt steak is more narrow and a bit thicker, with a richer, more tender flavor.

Herd & Grace is my source for high-quality protein and their Cape Grim skirt steak is grass-fed and grass finished. The cattle are raised on Tasmanian pasture, where clean air and rich grazing does the work long before the pan does.

However, if inside skirt steak from the grocery store is the meat available and in your budget range, this delicious marinade will tenderize the hell out of it!

Herbaceous Chimichurri, with fresh garlic and a blast of red wine vinegar, adds the perfect counterpoint to the hot-seared meat. Let’s make it!

Serves 4

Ingredients:

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It’s the ultimate coffee dessert. Sublime, in that cool Italian way. Doesn’t try too hard. Not too sweet, just a bit of sugar balances the strong coffee. Light. Rich. Bruce loves tiramisu so much that on our last trip to Italy, he often indulged after lunch and dinner. The most memorable one was on our trip to Taormina, Sicily at a restaurant called La Tiramisu. Rather than serving a tidy square cut from a prepared casserole, it was deconstructed with a mound of fluffy custard on top of the soaked ladyfingers. Wow! It lived up to the restaurant’s name!

Traditionally, it’s layered into a casserole dish and made the day before serving to allow the flavors to meld. It’s also very cute served in a mason jar. Today I will share this delicious recipe and show you three ways to serve it!

Your recipe begins with whipped egg yolks and mascarpone. Mascarpone is a beautiful soft Italian cheese, thick and creamy. It’s available at gourmet markets or can be ordered online. It’s like a fresh cream cheese with no preservatives. There really is no substitute, in my opinion. The custard is lightened with fluffy egg whites. You will also need ladyfingers, which are barely sweetened spongecake biscuits to dunk in the espresso. They are generally available in baking aisles of a grocery store. Many traditional tiramisu recipes are flavored with dark rum or marsala wine. I opt for sweet marsala wine because I only like a very slight flavor of alcohol.

NOTE: This recipe contains raw eggs. Consume at your own risk. (That’s what the Italians do.)

Serves 12

Ingredients:

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Thin layers of homemade egg pasta, a hearty Bolognese, creamy béchamel, and fluffy mounds of grated Parmigiano Reggiano - these are the ingredients of a Classic Lasagna Bolognese. In the Southern Italian regions you will more commonly find varieties with thicker dried pasta sheets, robust tomato sauce, ricotta and mozzarella cheeses and sometimes sausage, mini meatballs or even hard boiled egg. There an infinite number of delicious varieties with elegant sauces, vegetables, meats and cheeses.

Today we celebrate the classic; one worthy of a full day’s prep, worthy of a full batch of slowly simmered bolognese, worthy of kneading the pasta dough and rolling out the thin sheets, worthy of a family assembly line, worthy as a centerpiece of a holiday table - or in this case, a summer dinner with dear friends.

I have a long detailed recipe for my Bolognese in my book, SERVED From My Family Table to Yours. I use five kinds of meat - pancetta, ground beef, pork and veal, plus a couple of meaty shanks. It’s slowly simmered with wine, broth and a bit of tomato sauce. In today’s recipe, I will focus on the technique of each element, the layering process with the homemade pasta and the béchamel, so you can recreate this spectacular lasagna. The result allows the bolognese to be the star, but softened into a sublime amalgam of sauce, pasta and creamy béchamel. You won’t see an image of a perfectly cut square slice with distinct layers visible from the side. This is loose, meaty, creamy soft wow of a lasagna.

Serves 8

Ingredients:

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Making a fast-food worthy smash burger, at home, requires a couple of tools, a bit of technique, the perfect ingredients, and practice! The viral smash burger is known for those caramelized, browned edges that peek out over the edges of the bun. I love them so much, I invested in a Griddle Top Pan, just to master how to make them! This pan can be placed over your stove top or on your grill and provides a nice, large space to smash the burger patties and thin out the edges for the signature lacy patties. It comes with the meat press to smash those patties! Or use a large cast iron skillet and order yourself a bacon press (a sturdy spatula or bottom of a pan can work too).

Top priority – your selection of ground beef. Lean ground beef is not your friend here. You want 75/25 or 80/20. Anything leaner will not yield as good of a result. If you really want to impress, use Herd & Grace Robbins Island Wagyu Ground Beef for superior marbling and unreal flavor. These steer live in pristine Tasmanian conditions of clean air and clean water, with thousands of acres of grass, plus barley feed for rich, flavorful meat. This is Japanese-style Wagyu at a fraction of the price. Next, you must start with small patties if you want the caramelized edge! 2 oz. patties are quite thin, but they give a lot of lace on the edge and are easy to double up. The largest I would go is 4 oz. per patty. I haven’t tried 3 oz. patties, but that might be just perfect for a double-patty smashburger.

Secret Sauce – yes, mayo, ketchup and mustard, plus I add a few secret additions to take it over the top! Just the right combo of creamy and zippy!

You want to really “sell” the fast-food vibe? Order these cute-ass checkered papers and wrap the Smash Burgers before serving. Let’s get to smashing!

Serves 4

Ingredients:

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Homemade ravioli - the ultimate Italian labor of love. My first memories of homemade ravioli come from my Nonna. She hand rolled and stuffed the ravioli, and served them with a sweet tomato sauce. With age her beautiful old hands continued to roll out the pasta, and the ravioli became a little thicker. It was a treasure whenever we were able to eat her delicious food. I always think of my Nonna when I make ravioli. I’m sure she would love my Kitchen-Aid pasta attachment to get those thin, translucent sheets of pasta, especially when you add zucchini flowers to really put on a show!

Serves 4 as an appetizer (Makes 12 large ravioli)

Ingredients:

For Pasta Dough:

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Let’s start with the flowers - zucchini Blossoms are either female or male. The female blossoms may have the young zucchini attached at the base. It’s lovely to serve them this way. Inside, at the base of the blossom, you will usually find a pollen-covered pistil that needs to be removed before stuffing. The male flowers look identical from the outside, except they do not produce a zucchini, they grow on a stem. Inside, at the base of the petals, they have a small yellow stamen. Either way, simply snap off the pistil or stamen with your fingertips before stuffing, since they have a bitter flavor.

Next, we gently fill the cavity with a simple ricotta mixture, then coat the blossoms in rice flour tempura batter and fry until crisp. Serve with blistered cherry tomatoes and wow – truly sublime and easier than your think. The most difficult part of the recipe is finding fresh zucchini blossoms. A farm stand, a farmer’s market or a specialty market are the most common places where I see them, and if they are available, I buy them on the spot and cook them the same day.

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

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The best recipes use simple, seasonal ingredients with minimal effort and this salad was no exception. After over-purchasing juicy peaches (guilty again!) I saw they were beginning to bruise in the fridge. Shelf mates? The usually scarce organic corn on the cab, tender young carrots, and broccoli started to form a concept in my mind for a side dish. The resulting charred, roasted veggies with a pop of peach and fresh basil makes for a lovely accompaniment to Steamed Clams with Tuscan Fettunta or your protein of choice. Not one vegetable or fruit went unused in the making of this salad! This would also work well with green beans, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, cherries and more!

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

8 ears organic corn

2 heads broccoli, cut into small florets

2 bunches young carrots (or 8 carrots, sliced on the diagonal into large chunks)

Extra virgin olive oil

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

6 peaches, cut into bite-sized pieces

Juice of 2 lemons

10 fresh basil leaves, torn into pieces

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Char the corn on a hot grill or over the flame of your stove-top burner until blistered on all sides. Set aside to slightly cool, then carefully slice the niblets off the cob and set aside.

Cut the peaches into bite-size pieces and reserve in a bowl. Squeeze one lemon over the peaches to keep them from browning. Season with salt.

Place the broccoli and carrots onto a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil, then season well with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for about 30 minutes, until tender.

Place the corn niblets on a large serving platter or bowl. Add the roasted carrots and broccoli.

When ready to serve, add the peaches and gently toss to combine. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil then season well with salt and pepper. Squeeze the lemon over the top, then garnish with freshly torn basil.

“Uncle Vic is going to the Cape to dig for clams!” A familiar phrase, reminiscent of childhood summers gone by, brings sweet memories of huge bowls of steamed clams and rustic bread toasted in the pan with olive oil, then rubbed with fresh garlic. Cockles, Manila or Little Neck clams - look for the freshest available for your clam fest! I estimate about 1 ½ pound per person. Garlic, onion, a bit of pancetta and plenty of white wine to cook with (and to drink!) - this is your recipe for a communal clam fest, with friends and family gathered at the table for a festive meal.

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

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A value cut of beef, like flank steak, becomes tenderized with a bit of baking soda, then marinated for just a few minutes while you pull together a sauce. A few staples in your Asian pantry will make this meal a snap! It comes to life with the fresh aromatics, garlic, ginger and green onions. Serve over fluffy rice and you will be eating this comforting meal before take-out delivery could even arrive!

Serves 4

Ingredients:

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I love a small-bite starter that sets the palate off with exciting flavors. These wonderful pot stickers do the trick, with a filling made from a combination of pork and shrimp, flavored with ginger, garlic, and green onions. Dunk them into a little dipping sauce and, “Wow!” I used ground pork and shrimp from Herd & Grace, or you can find these ingredients at your local market. The gyoza/pot sticker wrappers are found in the refrigerator section of the store. If you have a hard time finding them, check at Asian specialty stores or order online.

Ingredients:

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My adaptation of this freeform dessert lands somewhere between a pavlova and an Eton Mess. The original Eton Mess originated in Great Britain, with layers of meringue cookies, berries, berry compote and whipped cream. It’s quite forgiving and a wonderful light treat for hot summer months. In my version, I have added pastry cream as an extra element of creamy goodness. The meringues call for 6 egg whites, so I came up with a companion recipe that needs 6 egg yolks; lo and behold, the addition of my beloved pastry cream.

The key to either dessert is nailing the meringues. With only a couple of ingredients, the technique is key to your success. Cream of tartar vs white vinegar? Cream of tartar creates a more dry and stiff meringue – some say more appropriate for meringue cookies. White vinegar gives the meringues the signature marshmallow center, preferable for a pavlova. I used white vinegar.

Batch #1: My first batch deflated quite quickly, a fail! I used organic granulated sugar, cornstarch, white vinegar and vanilla extract. I did not beat the egg whites for long enough, I didn’t cook them for long enough, and I didn’t properly cool in the oven.

Batch #2: My second batch was good. They were light, crisp on the outside with a nice marshmallow center. I used the same ingredients as Batch #1, but I whipped the egg whites for longer, and the cooking time was longer. A nice result, but I kept thinking, “Could be better!” CBB is the acronym my daughter gave me, since she has often received this constructive criticism! These meringues were stable and light, but I didn’t get the height I wanted.

Batch #3: My third batch really hit the mark, so much that I decided they needed to be served as a proper pavlova, instead of the layered mess. Tips for success: from my research and testing, caster sugar (extra fine) baker’s sugar is better than granulated sugar for texture and color. Vanilla extract has a nice flavor but leave it out for whiter meringues. If you want a flavor, try almond extract (clear color) or vanilla powder. I honestly didn’t miss it. In Batch #3 I did not use cornstarch, but next time I make this I will try including it. I think it helped create a smooth meringue surface in Batch #2. Most importantly, I beat the egg whites twice as long as I did in previous batches. In Batch 3, they were much glossier and sooooo stiff – they felt closer to a light taffy texture. There was no “weeping” which is when a stiff peak will settle if left over a bit of time. These stiff peaks were much easier to keep high and the result was amazing.

These meringues were quite large, but I wanted to stack them for a grand presentation with a pointed crown, so I made each dessert enough for two! Any of your failed meringues are perfect to layer into a mess. The chewy bite of meringue floating in the whipped cream with berries – divine!

For Meringues

Makes 8 meringues

Ingredients:

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This platter of colorful tomatoes glistening with Fresh Pressed Olive Oil, gets a healthy shaving of Manchego and a garnish of briny caper berries. It makes a lovely, light side for any summer meal. If you really want to bring it to the next level, serve alongside crusty, toasted rustic bread with a thin slice of chorizo, then top with the sliced tomatoes. What a crunch, what a bite!

Serves 4

Ingredients:

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Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 4 medium zucchini

• 3-4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

• Juice of 1 lemon

• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

• 2 ounces Parmigiano Reggiano, shaved into thin curls

• Basil sprigs, for garnish

Directions:

Thinly slice zucchini on a mandoline. Arrange the slices on a platter, starting at one end, then overlapping to create a fish scale pattern.

When one single layer is complete, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, then the lemon juice. Season well with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. (If desired, add another layer of zucchini, and repeat with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.)

Top with Parmesan cheese curls. Garnish with sprigs of fresh basil and serve immediately.

Sushi-grade raw ahi tuna soaks up the vibrant flavors in this colorful appetizer. Bright citrus, briny olives, creamy avocado, a hint of chili, with a drizzle of Fresh Pressed Olive Oil – it hits all the right notes for a sexy summer starter!

Serves 4

Ingredients:

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It’s no secret that ribs are one of my favorite foods, but these Iberico Pork Ribs from Spain take my obsession to a whole new level. The hogs wander freely in beautiful pastures, grazing on grass and acorns. Their beautiful environment and diet creates a nutty, earthy flavor that combines with superior marbling for a spectacular result. With pork of this quality, we don’t need a heavy sauce.

I simply combine smoked paprika with a few spices, plus grated garlic and onion. A touch of brown sugar and sherry vinegar pulls the rub together with a balance of sweet, spice, salt, acid, and earthy flavors that complement the ribs without masking the unparalleled quality of the meat. You may certainly use this recipe with your own selection of baby back or spare ribs, but if you can taste the magic of Iberico Pork Ribs you will experience a flavor sensation - and you’ll understand why one bite made me weep!

Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

• 2 racks Campo Grande Iberico St. Louis Ribs

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I call this bountiful salad an entertainer’s best friend. Once you are done with the prep, this one spectacular platter provides slurp-worthy noodles, crisp vegetables, tender greens, succulent fruit, creamy avocado and fresh herbs. Right before serving, drizzle with the Sesame Ginger Vinaigrette to pull it all together. Pair with my Sticky, Sweet Flanken-Style Short Ribs (or teriyaki chicken or grilled shrimp) and you have a wonderful summer menu that allows you to join the party.

Setting up an Asian pantry with a variety of sauces, seasonings, oils and vinegars will help to demystify recipes. Here are a few I have on hand.

Washing the prepping my vegetables and fruits is an early task in setting up meal. I place everything on a large baking sheet and store in the fridge until I’m ready to assemble.

Feel free to make substitutions based on local availability of the freshest and most delicious produce. Use a couple of nice lettuces, tropical fruit like mango or papaya, crisp raw snap peas or snow peas, avocado, organic edamame (which are available frozen), vibrant radishes, and fresh herbs such as cilantro, Thai basil and mint. When you drizzle with the Sesame Ginger Vinaigrette, you will have a flavor explosion, with savory and sweet, combining for a victorious dish that covers your vegetarian friends, plus pairs your protein entrée with a unified salad, vegetable, and starch!

Serves 6

Ingredients:

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The humble short rib, considered a “value cut” of beef, is lovingly braised until tender, then finished with an Asian glaze that provides the salty, sweet, spicy balance to create a swoon-worthy bite!

These ribs are really easy to make and the preparation down in advance makes it a wonderful option for company, since they may be braised in advance and then finished in the oven or on a grill right before serving. Add a spectacular salad, like my Tropical Rice Noodle Mango Salad with Sesame Ginger Vinaigrette, and you can relax with your guests and enjoy a summer night.

Served 4

Ingredients:

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