Garden fresh, vine ripened, local tomatoes make me recall a vivid summer memory. My grandfather ("Nonno") on my mother's side used to tend a huge garden behind his house in Dorchester MA. He would take us back there to pick ripe tomatoes right off the vine and eat them like they were candy. They were warm from the mid-day sun and had a hearty aroma that only garden tomatoes have. My family made a tomato salad that everyone raved about - especially the rich juices that you sopped up with crusty Italian bread. (My Italian grandparents would say a dialect word that sounded like "woongie" to describe the sopping up ritual. I can't find the actual spelling anywhere!). I've done my best to resurrect those flavors in this recipe.

Richard knew he'd finally perfected his chicken soup recipe when Nancy and Bridget both remarked, "It tastes just like your Mother's!" Chicken soup was a regular Monday-evening meal at the Curzi household, and a more dressed-up version (usually with tiny meatballs - or "polpettini") was always the opening course of every major holiday meal. And anyone who had soup made by Richard's mother, Ida, would invariably say it was the best soup they'd ever tasted. While this recipe may not follow Ida's approach exactly, the result is as close to hers as we've ever achieved. Richard's approach makes good use of something that might otherwise get thrown away - the carcass of a roasted chicken makes for the richest chicken stock.

One of our favorite meals while in Austin Texas was a take on lasagna that used "Farfalle" pasta ("Butterflies" or otherwise known as "Bowties") instead of lasagna noodles. It had Nancy's favorite vegetable - eggplant - and roasted portobello mushrooms for a nice umami flavor. Patrick was particularly fond of this one - he ate it cold right out of the Tupperware container during his long drive back to Richmond. 

To accommodate our relatives' plant-based diet we used vegan "cheeses" including "ricotta" made from soaked raw cashews that was remarkably creamy and delicious. If you like, you can make it just as easily with dairy-based cheeses and oven-ready lasagna noodles.

At one of our very first restaurant meals of our trip, at La Bossa in Camogli, Richard had his first taste of the Ligurian pasta specialty called "trofie". These little curly strands of pasta are served with string beans (and sometimes potatoes!) and drenched in pesto - the fabulous Genoese sauce made from fresh basil, garlic, pine nuts, grated cheese, and olive oil. When our nephew Patrick came to join us, Trofie al Pesto became his go-to order. Though readily available throughout most of Italy, this type of pasta is seldom seen in the US. So, we decided to make our own.