I love Italian food, but don’t like to eat simple carbs like pasta and rice too often so my options as a vegetarian at Italian restaurants are usually pretty limited. So when I saw Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking mentioned as THE Italian cookbook, it quickly made it’s way onto my short list of books to check out from the library.

Hazan’s vegetable recipes are very simple, more notions of how to cook the vegetable in question than recipes, but sometimes I save recipes just to be reminded to make things. There are lots of simple preparations of various veggies topped with butter, breadcrumbs, parmesan that are often the best way to serve a vegetable, but when you’re like me and have binders full of recipes to try, you often forget the simple basic ways. I bookmarked several of these quick savory vegetable recipes.

Some other notable recipes:

I never save recipes for soups with rice in them, but the Rice & Smothered Cabbage Soup recipe somehow appeals to me.

The recipe for Acquacotta - Tuscan Peasant Soup with Cabbage & Beans looks like a fantastic way to use up the celery sitting in my fridge, I may make this on Monday if I have time (the cooking time is over 3 hours, not active thankfully).

As I mentioned above, since we avoid simple carbs I couldn’t excuse a pasta machine even though though there are many ravioli recipes I would love to make (and rolling pins are my nemesis). Hazan includes a huge chapter on pastas and sauces of course, including how to make various pastas. The one pasta that I bookmarked is actually in the soups section and calls for a food mill - Passatelli Egg & Parmesan Strands in Broth, I’m going to try to make it like spaetzle with my ricer.

Speaking of soup, I’ve never found minestrone to be very interesting, but I am intrigued by Hazan’s recipe for Paniscia which marries risotto with leftover bean & veggie soup. Another rice dish that I’ll try is Boiled Rice with Parmesan, Mozzarella, and Basil - it’s a bit unhealthy with all that cheese but I think I’ll pair with with kale & capers to cut the fat.

It’s amazing to me that I can deal so well with an abundance of squash considering that just three years ago I was convinced it was poison. I have an aversion to nightshades, I managed to get over it with squash, now I aspire to be able to eat eggplant. Back to abundance though, if you’re only feeding two, even a medium butternut squash can be enough for 2-4 different recipes.

I used half of one in this Butternut Squash Galette inspired by Julie’s sweet potato version. I’d been wanting to try Julie’s recipe for quite awhile, but I just recently finally bought myself a cast iron skillet. With the fontina cheese, this is a perfectly rich autumn dish.

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So, I’ve finally just made the Chickpea Cutlets from Isa Chandra’s Veganomicon. I’d heard variously that they were a bit too dry, a bit low on flavour, the best thing ever. I wanted a good gravy to be safe, but didn’t want the heaviness of my usual go-tos (red wine gravy & roasted garlic gravy). I wanted something lighter & ended up thinking honey, thyme, lemon. So I made a basic roux & added the flavors I wanted. This gravy is a perfect compliment to the chickpea cutlets (which by the way, are the best thing ever. Very similar to the Morningstar Chik Patties I used to be addicted to).

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