Italian Bread Salad

Love Italian? Cut leftover white bread into cubes and let them stale a bit to make this easy and brilliant summer salad the Italians invented to use up day-old bread. Wakes up everyone's taste buds and with the bread cubes soaked in the wonderfully assertive dressing it's filling enough to be its own meal. Easy. Serves 6 to 8.

Italian Bread Salad

1 pound lettuce (romaine is nice)
1 large cucumber (English is preferred)
1 large fresh tomato, cut in thin wedges
1 cup sliced red radishes or daikon radish
1/2 pound or 4 cups stale French or Italian bread, cut in 1-inch cubes
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced (don't omit!)
1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup wine vinegar
1 tsp. dried basil or dried mixed Italian herbs
2 or 3 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
1/2 teaspoon salt
fresh-ground black pepper to taste
1/2 cup fresh-grated Parmesan cheese; the stuff in the cans won't work.

Wash the lettuce, pat or spin the leaves dry, tear them into bite-sized pieces. Peel the cucumber and slice. Put the lettuce and cucumber in a large bowl along with the tomato, radishes, bread cubes and onion.

Next, put the oil, vinegar, basil or seasoning, garlic, salt, and some pepper in a blender and blend at high speed for 1 minute. Pour the dressing over the salad, sprinkle on the Parmesan cheese, and toss the salad gently for several minutes.

Chill the salad at least a half-hour before serving. Two or three days from now it'll taste just as good.

Pasta with Caper Sauce

No-cook, tangy sauce I made in a Pyrex cup. Good for when there's nothing but capers and mustard in the fridge. Serves 4 to 6.

Pasta with Caper Sauce

1/4 cup basil pesto or 1 cup packed fresh basil
1 to 2 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons capers
3 tablespoons prepared mustard
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup olive oil
1 pound pasta

Start the pasta.

Make all the ingredients except the olive oil into a paste however you can. Stir in the olive oil until it's all incorporated. Cook and drain the pasta. Pour the sauce over it and serve.

My Favorite Pasta Sauce Recipe: Pasta a la Bandit

This fast and fragrant chunky pasta sauce made with a can of tomatoes along with butter, black olives and capers, is from a cookbook that a library sold me for 25 cents, called Cooking from an Italian Garden (1984). The recommended pasta is a long, hollow spaghetti called bucatini, which cooks in 11 minutes. Bucatini is hard to find here, so I ordered a 20-pound case directly from the DaVinci company. No kidding; I did. Substitute thick spaghetti and it will be fine.

Bucatini Briganteschi ("Highway-Robber Style") (serves 4 to 6)

2 Tablespoons butter
6 Tablespoons olive oil (divided)
1-1/2 cups (or one 14-oz can) diced tomatoes, undrained
1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper
1/4 cup pitted and chopped black Italian or kalamata olives
1 Tablespoon whole capers
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1 garlic clove, crushed or chopped
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste (optional)
1 pound bucatini or thick spaghetti
3 Tablespoons freshly-grated Parmesan cheese
2 Tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Place butter and 3 Tablespoons of olive oil in a saucepan and heat. Add the tomatoes and cook for 3 minutes. Add the hot pepper, capers, olives, oregano and garlic. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes or until sauce thickens. Add the black pepper, if desired, and keep warm.

Cook the pasta in 4 quarts of rapidly boiling salted water, stirring occasionally, until al dente. Drain and place in a warm serving bowl. Add the Parmesan and sauce and combine. Add 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and the parsley, and serve.

Every recipe I have tried from this cookbook is a good and flavorful one!

A New Orleans Specialty: Muffuletta Olive Salad Recipe

Mixed olives and other pickled vegetables, plus garlic, parsley, celery. . .this is flavorful "muffaletta," a Sicilian-inspired New Orleans specialty invented in 1906. At Italian groceries retails for $7 a pound. Or, try this recipe from Taste of Home magazine, minus the prepared "giardiniera" (mixed pickled vegetables) I couldn't get because it's sleeting outside. No cooking, just chopping. Spread on bread or sandwiches, top pizza (pictured) or pasta, or make salad or potato salad with it.

Midwest Muffuletta

1/3 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon dried oregano
3 to 6 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 tablespoon thinly sliced green onion

1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1-1/2 cup green olives with pimientos, chopped (bottled "salad olives" okay)
1/2 cup pitted Greek olives, halved
1/3 cup roasted red sweet peppers, chopped (or substitute; see below)
1/4 cup finely chopped celery (or substitute; see below)
1 tablespoon drained capers

In a large bowl, whisk the first 7 ingredients, olive oil through red pepper flakes. Add the remaining ingredients; toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 8 hours. Keeps for a week at least. 99 calories per 2/3 of a cup.

Substitute for roasted red sweet peppers: 1/2 of a large fresh red or orange bell pepper, diced
Substitute for celery: Chop finely those big white tough lettuce ribs you usually throw away.

Recipe: Sausage and Peppers, Super Easy in Microwave

Men love this entree and you can cook it faster than they can eat it, and that's fast. Serve over mashed potatoes or pasta, or with Italian bread, or by itself. Only one dish, the casserole dish, gets used; no skillets. Please try it when harvesting bell peppers and basil. Recipe can be doubled; just use a bigger casserole dish.

Sausage and Peppers (2 large servings)

3  fresh Italian sausage links, cut into 2-inch lengths
1 medium onion, peeled and chopped into 2-inch chunks
3 bell peppers, stemmed, seeded, deribbed and cut into 2-inch chunks
3 tablespoons tightly packed fresh basil leaves or 2 tablespoons of basil pesto
Few spoonfuls of tomato sauce, or a small tomato, cut up
Salt (optional)

1. Place sausage pieces in a 1-1/2 quart casserole dish, cover loosely with paper toweling and microwave at 100 percent for 5 minutes, then stir and check that the sausage is cooked through; that's how you want it. If not, microwave it minute by minute until it's cooked through.
2. Remove casserole dish from oven, uncover it, and use the paper towel to soak up most of the rendered fat. Discard the paper towel.
3. Add remaining ingredients to the dish, stir to coat, and cover the dish tightly with microwavable plastic wrap. Cook at 100 percent for 7 minutes.
4. Remove dish from the microwave. Uncover and sprinkle with salt if desired. Serve.

This came from Microwave Gourmet (1987), a truly inspired cookbook by Barbara Kafka, who developed great microwave recipes for ribs, poultry, seafood, vegetables, brownies & c. The book is a revelation; do check it out.

The Piehole Goes Italian: Pizza, and Arugula Salad

The one food I would want on a desert island is pizza and I eat it thrice a week at least. I buy a bag of five or six nine-inch frozen pizza shells, the thin kind, from the Italian grocery, because they're cheaper than at the big grocery store. Also, at the Italian place buy pizza seasoning. Nothing else will make your home pizza taste like real pizza. Penzey's Spices sells Pizza Seasoning too.

To make your pizza crisp and tasty, pour some olive oil on top of the shell and spread it to the edges. Then dust it with pizza spice. Top with whatever, in this case some fresh mushrooms that I'd sauteed slowly in a little butter to get the water out. Tomato is not always necessary. I always put cheese, and make up for the indulgence by eatin' my greens. Absent a real pizza shell, I'll use a wheat tortilla, same way. After it's baked, cool it slightly on a rack, not in the pan, or the bottom gets soggy.

Arugula (aka roquette or rocket) is a very spicy leafy herb that's fast and easy to grow and get hooked on. Get organic arugula seeds from The Cook's Garden; at least that's where I got mine. Plant in sun and ignore (okay, water a bit during drought) and harvest in about four weeks. Wash it and stem it and spin it like any other green.

An All-Arugula Salad is heavenly and needs to be dressed very lightly and simply. A few drops of olive oil; toss. A squeeze of lemon juice. Toss. A mini-pinch of salt. It's ready. A few thin slices of fresh mushroom won't hurt. Tomato, though, would be gilding the lily. I like serving it on a glass plate like I get my salads in Italian restaurants.