10 patina recipes

Italian Christmas cookies (Patina di Natale) studded with toasted pine nuts and brightened by lemon zest. A buttery, golden-glazed cookie-cutter classic from the holiday tables of southern Italy.

Avocado halves stuffed with saffron pastina, chopped tomatoes, scallions, parsley, and vinaigrette. An elegant lunch main or dinner first course with golden, fragrant pasta filling.

Saffron-laced pastina salad with pine nuts, currants, fresh mint, and orange blossom water. A fragrant Middle Eastern-inspired room temperature pasta side dish with turmeric and cumin.

A rustic Italian stew where stale bread melts into garlicky Roma tomatoes, white wine, and fresh marjoram with tiny pastina stirred in at the end. Vegetarian comfort in 45 minutes.

Stale bread simmers with Roma tomatoes, garlic, white wine, and marjoram in this hearty Italian peasant stew. Tiny pastina added at the end gives it body. Ready in 45 minutes.

The legendary French upside-down apple tart with just four ingredients: puff pastry, apples, butter, and caramelized sugar. Flip it onto a plate and prepare for gasps.

Hearty pasta and lentil soup with mushrooms, tomato paste, garlic, and ground ginger. A thick, protein-rich Italian-style soup that cooks in one pot.

Old-fashioned chicken soup simmers a whole chicken with chicken feet, garlic, carrots, celery, and herbs for three hours to extract maximum flavor and collagen. Grandma-style cure-all served over pastina or rice.

Sear jumbo shrimp in olive oil, deglaze with white wine, and toss with butter and pasta for a restaurant-worthy dinner that's done in 15 minutes flat.

Yes from the year 1475. Platina mentions several odd fishes not usually used today as food, such as cuttlefish, scorpions, lampreys and sea-lion. But most of his fish are still favorites-eels, lobsters, crabs, oysters, sturgeon and sturgeon eggs (which he calls caviar), salmon, sole, etc., and he gives a recipe for a Squid Dish for Days of Abstinence. Although squid is eaten today in the South of France and Greece, and can be found in special fish shops here, I would prefer salmon or halibut. But if you hanker for squid, just go ahead with it if you can find some, and be sure to have the fish man prepare it for you by removing the black liquid from the backbone.