Salsiccia di Maiale Fatta in Casa (Italian Homemade Pork Sausage) Homemade sausage is one of the few things a home kitchen does better than a shop, because you decide what goes in. You choose the cut, you set the ratio of lean to fat, you weigh the salt, and you crack the fennel the same day. No binders, no colour, no filler. This is the seasoning of a sweet Italian sausage: garlic, red wine, cracked fennel seed, cracked black pepper, sweet paprika, parsley and a few dried he

Cozze Gratinate (Italian Baked Mussels au Gratin) Cozze gratinate open a seafood meal along most of the Italian coast, and they rest on an idea that sounds simple and is not: a shell holds a mussel, the mussel holds a cap of crust, and that crust reaches the table crisp above and moist below, the shellfish under it still plump. The crust is not breadcrumb alone. It is breadcrumb bound with finely grated cheese, scented with parsley, garlic and lemon zest, coated in olive oil

Italian Baked Spinach and Pea Frittata (Frittata al Forno di Spinaci e Piselli) A baked frittata is a different object from a pan frittata, and the spinach version is where the difference matters most. In a tray, in the oven, the eggs set from every side at once and nothing is flipped, so a wet filling has nowhere to escape to. Spinach is the wettest filling an Italian kitchen puts into eggs: a bag of leaves cooks down to a handful, and almost everything that disappears is wa