Cleaning out the fridge II. I had some pancetta, cream, spinach, and gorgonzola. I like to add the cream twice. I cook down the first addition, then just before the sauce is done, I add a little more for a very creamy texture. Simple, easy, tasty.

Cleaning out the fridge... done well. I had some left over tomatoes from the ragu and spinach from the pasta at Emilia's birthday. So I whipped up a tomato cream sauce with spinach and cooked some gulf shrimp in the sauce and served over pasta. This was very good.

This dish was a birthday request from Emilia. In addition to pizza for lunch and spaghetti and meatballs for the Saturday party event, AND the salmon on Sunday, Emilia wanted Lasagne verde on her birthday. The recipe is the classic from Marcella Hazan. The ragu was made with half veal and half beef. Emilia and I made the pasta and we achieved 10 layers before running out of headroom in the pan. This takes some effort, but every time I taste it, I wonder why I don't make it more often. I made this dish the day we brought both Emilia and Annabella home from the hospital.

My two favorite contributors; Marcella Hazan with the pork chop in tomatoes, accompanied by Lynn Rosetto Kaspers carrots and fried sage leaves...

Our new favorite salmon recipe, courtesy of Marcella Hazan. Although the Italians don't eat much salmon (there are no wild stocks there), this is a great recipe. I've been roasting sweet peppers on the grill most weekends. I use them for pasta sauce, pizza topping, appetizers and this. Good quality olive oil, capers, roasted peppers, garlic, and the salmon roast in at 375' oven for ~15 minutes. Easy, simple, delicious. A note about roasting peppers. I coat them with olive oil then, in winter, bake them at 400', or in summer roast them in the grill. I think the key is waiting until one collapses, I then put them in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap to allow them to sweat a bit. The skin comes off effortlessly. I put them in a storage container with some very good olive oil, a little salt, and fresh marjoram leaves. I use them for a week.

One of my favorites; crostini. I like to make this with mozzarella di bufala and prosciutto di Parma, but in this case I'm using local fresh goat ricotta with tomatoes and basil. There is something about the olive oil, bread, and cheese...

A pleasant variation on salmon. In this case, I used wild sockeye over layered potatoes in a lemon cream sauce; topped with capers and parsley. I absolutely love capers with salmon.

Here's an example of a recipe that went wrong, but still turned out good. My intention was to make an Italian crostata, but the U.S. apricots were huge and I ended up with more filling than intended. It turned into an apricot pie. A good one.

Every spring, one must enjoy the fresh Morel mushrooms. In this case I used them in a pasta sauce with a few dried porcini and the liquid from their soak, topped with fresh parmigiano reggiano and some fresh black truffle from Italy. The fall truffles taste much better, but it seemed like the perfect opportunity for a funghi trifecta.