One great cookbook: 'Salt to Taste'

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If you have read even a smidge about Italian cooking, you have encountered the adage that Italian food is all about simplicity. Defining simplicity, though, is not always simple. Marco Canora's "Salt to Taste: The Keys to Confident, Delicious Cooking," published in 2009, traces the ways simplicity materializes in Italian-inspired cooking.

Successful simplicity demands either minimal or standout ingredients and also precise cooking technique and resourcefulness. Canora, the chef-owner of New York City's Hearth restaurant and also the arguable progenitor of the bone broth craze thanks to his brothy endeavor Brodo, shows you how these are endgames you can achieve at home.

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Generational wealth

Canora's family hails from Tuscany, so "Salt to Taste" is riddled with the flavors of that central Italian region. Cacciucco is a seafood stew teeming with squid, clams, mussels and shrimp, its base piquant with tomato puree, white wine and dried oregano. Tuscan kale, aka dinosaur or lacinato kale, steps into the spotlight across the book. Its appearance predates the wrinkly vegetable's ubiquity so much so that Canora calls it "black cabbage."

He directs you to strip it of its ribs, then toss the leaves in a zip-top bag and store in the freezer. Then when you go to make yet another iconic Tuscan dish, the vegetable soup known as ribollita, you remove the kale from the freezer and "when you crush the frozen cabbage, it winds up in a million little pieces — just what you want." The leaves are put to softer use in a risotto with sausage and in a nonchalant braise alongside chickpeas served over soft polenta.

Two sides of simple

Little in "Salt to Taste" exemplifies Canora's proficiency in showing you how to build flavor like his pasta e fagioli. You first warm pieces of bacon and either prosciutto or pancetta in olive oil, then when the meaty bits have rendered their fat, you add diced onions. Cook down. Add chopped garlic. Cook down. Add fresh rosemary and sage. Cook down. Then comes tomato paste and, yes, more cooking down. Tier upon tier of compounding flavor are established before broth and beans are added. Right before serving, you boil short pasta like ditalini or elbow macaroni and mix it into the soup. Finish with a nub of butter and a dusting of Parmigiano, along with fresh ground black pepper and a lash of olive oil. Bowls of deep-seated comfort.

Canora's stracciatella sits at the other side of the swinging pendulum. It is no more than good homemade broth into which you add eggs that have been mixed with Parmigiano, parsley and a whisper of nutmeg. Cover the pot and let sit for a few minutes. Whisk the eggs and they transform into wispy rags. Five ingredients, plus salt and pepper. See? Simplicity is multivalent. In Marco Canora's hands it is also reliably gratifying.