in defense of Marcella’s Amatriciana

A few days ago the New York Times published this article on the pasta sauce Amatriciana. It was a loving portrait of the town of Amatrice, but I thought it contained a lot of questionable assertions about Amatricina. Although I doubt it will be published, I wrote this letter to the editor in reply. For my own recipe, check this out.

In defense of Marcella’s Amatriciana

I read with interest Stephen Hall’s loving portrait of the town of Amatrice and the pasta sauce (Amatriciana) which takes its name from it. His description of Amatrice, all but destroyed by a 2016 earthquake, and its slow recovery were moving and valuable.

His discussion of the pasta sauce, however, left much to be desired. His criticism of Marcella Hazan’s recipe was especially troubling. Mr. Hall’s search for the “real Amatriciana” led him down a common but unfortunate road in pursuit of a kind of non-existent purity, as if such a thing as the “real Amatriciana” could possibly exist. This approach to cooking is akin to one who looks for the “real” Beethoven by playing only on period instruments or the real Hamlet by performing with an English accent.

Cooking, like music, is about taste, judgment, and expression. Slavish reliance on recipes and formulae are antithetical to good cooking, as Marcella knew and taught. She knew that good cooking contained an element of improvisation and personality without creeping into the more questionable territory of “creative” cooking.

Mr. Hall criticizes Marcella’s use of butter in her recipe for Amatriciana, and in his article chefs from Amatrice heap on the scorn on the idea as well. But this only shows the small-mindedness which too often plagues and holds back proud and provincial Italians. Marcella knew better. Having lived in Rome, she surely knew that olive oil was the traditional cooking fat in Amatriciana. But she also had a palate. She knew that good cooking tasted like it came from a real person whose personality came through in the dish. Marcella was a human being of course and wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t a “goddess”, but a cook with personality. Her cooking was not the soulless, anonymous cooking of most restaurants, but the personal cooking of the home. A little butter in her amatriciana surely created a texture and flavor which she preferred to the “official” version from Amatrice.

No, Mr. Hall, by cooking Marcella’s version all these years you haven’t been “doing it wrong”. Perhaps, you were not cooking the “real Amatriciana”, whatever that might be. You were cooking Marcella’s Amatriciana to be sure, but there’s no reason that hers might not have been the one to provide the most pleasure to you. Maybe you were right all along.

 

spaghetti with tomatoes, garlic, and basil

The first pasta sauce I ever cooked from scratch was one with tomatoes, garlic, and basil from Marcella Hazan’s benchmark book: The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. I picked it because it was so familiar. It’s the kind of thing on every Italian-American restaurant menu. And I had had more than one meal at Romano’s Macaroni Grill. This sauce was what I thought Italian cooking was. For many Americans, it is the quintessential pasta sauce. It’s what I cooked for my college professor who came to dine with me and my then-girlfriend (the same professor who later tried to seduce said girlfriend. True story… but one for a different post).

The second sauce I ever cooked from scratch was another from Marcella: tomatoes with butter and onion. This one completely inverted the previous approach. Instead of the assertive garlic we had mellow onion. In place of the familiar duo of tomato and olive oil we had the more luxurious combo of tomatoes and butter. In place of the heady aroma of basil we had the rich complexity of parmigiano-reggiano. I took a bite and stopped cold. I can’t say it was love at first bite. It was so contrary in flavor and character to everything I thought I knew about Italian cooking, that I didn’t know what to make of it. Fortunately, I persevered. That sauce became beloved, as it has for so many countless others. It was the beginning of my true exploration of the cooking of Italy, so varied, so inexhaustible, and so different from Italian cooking in the US.

Over time perhaps I became a little snooty. Like the half-educated ass who reacts to the overuse of tomato by eliminating the tomato completely from his “Northern Italian” cooking, I began to look down upon that first sauce I had made, as if Italy were divided neatly into a “North” and “South” instead of a myriad of rich, diverse regions. Even though I had learned it from Marcella, the sauce with tomatoes, garlic, and basil came to represent Italian-American cooking to me. The Macaroni Grill. The Olive Garden. I stopped making it. I moved on to spaghetti alla carbonara, fresh pastas with butter-based sauces, true Bolognese lasagne made with spinach egg pasta but with neither ricotta nor mozzarella.

This was an important education. But it obscured the fact that pasta with tomatoes, garlic, and basil is truly Italian too, even if the Americanized version of it is a pale shadow of its true Italian nature. Marcella wrote that it’s one of countless Roman sauces called “alla carrettiera” (wagon-style), named for the wagons which brought down wine and produce to the city from the surrounding hillsides. It is improvisational and seasonal, as the best Italian cooking is. You cook not with recipes but with whatever looks best at market (or in the garden) on a given day.

What brought me back to the sauce in recent years was access to fresh, meaty tomatoes without seeds or juice. I love high-quality canned tomatoes and use them liberally, but on certain occasions a fresh tomato creates a subtly different flavor, color, and texture. This is one of those times. Many think that only plum tomatoes or “sauce tomatoes” are good for cooking, but the variety I’m growing this year is a large, ox-heart variety called Cauralina. It has firm flesh that nonetheless breaks down beautifully into the most succulent sauce. It’s inspiring to cook with.

Marcella gives the sauce a pretty long cook time, about 25 minutes, until the tomatoes are highly concentrated. She also uses an abundant amount of garlic (5 cloves), which is poached with the tomatoes but never browned for a more mild flavor. But one of the great joys of cooking is adapting a recipe to suit one’s style and personality. For me, the tomatoes should cook briefly, until breaking down but with still-recognizable pieces. It should be clear it was made with a fresh tomato.

This sauce represents the kind of cooking which is resistant to recipe writing. There are a dozen small details essential for the best result which just can’t be written down without excessive tediousness. The heat needs to be brisk but not so brisk that the tomatoes burn or become too dry. Sometimes a touch of water needs to be added to keep the sauce moist. Too much water dilutes the flavor and keeps the sauce from clinging properly to the pasta. The sauce needs to be salted correctly. But the salting needs to be done keeping in mind the amount of sauce you plan to dress the pasta with (the more moderate the dressing, the saltier the sauce should be). All of these decisions require observation and experience to draw on. I make the sauce much better today than I did 20 years ago. You would make it better cooking side by side with an experienced cook than reading a recipe (even this one!). Still, one must begin somewhere. This sauce is where I began, and it’s a sauce that I’m still happy to return to. When made well, there is no sauce which gives me greater pleasure.

Spaghetti with Tomatoes, Garlic & Basil (For two people)

Begin by bringing four quarts of well-salted water to a boil (1 to 2 tablespoons depending on the strength of the salt). Add about 100 grams of high-quality imported spaghetti.

In a medium saucepan, lightly saute some chopped or sliced garlic in a generous bit of high-quality olive oil until aromatic and very lightly colored. Add about a half pound of chopped, meaty fresh tomatoes from your garden or a good farmers market. Don’t bother peeling them or removing seeds, etc. Season with salt, ¼ to ½ teaspoon depending on the strength of the salt. Add freshly ground black pepper or dried hot pepper as you prefer.

Cook over lively heat for just a couple minutes until the tomatoes begin to break down. Add a little water here and there to keep everything moist. Add a few basil leaves if you like, keeping in mind that cooking reduces the aroma of basil significantly. When the sauce is mostly broken down with just a piece of tomato visible here and there, it is ready. Remove from the heat and check for salt. Keep in mind that the less sauce you use, the saltier the sauce should be.

When the pasta is ready it, return the sauce to lively heat and toss with the pasta with the sauce in the pan. Plate and garnish with fresh basil (whole leaves or chopped) and a drizzle of highest-quality olive oil.

pasta with fennel and tomatoes

Fennel can be a tough sell for people. Familiar only with the strong anise flavor of raw fennel, many people are unfamiliar with the way cooking mellows its flavor and makes it more luxurious. It’s a staple of my cooking classes in Italy, and I’ve never known anyone to not be won over.

In this preparation its flavor is paired with scallions and fresh tomatoes. By all means, substitute onions or leeks as necessary, and high-quality canned tomatoes are fine too. Just be sure to include as much hot pepper as you can stand.

Pasta with Fennel and Tomatoes (Serves 2)

Begin by chopping about a 1/4 cup of scallions or onions or leeks and gently sauté with a generous bit of high-quality olive oil for a minute or two until some aroma is released.

Add about a cup of fennel, diced or in slivers as you prefer. Season with salt and saute at a lively clip until the fennel is lightly browned, about 5 minutes or so.

Add about a cup of tomatoes, fresh or canned, and season with tomatoes with salt and hot pepper, as much as you can stand. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes or so until the tomatoes are reduced and saucy, adding water as necessary if the pan is too dry.

Meanwhile, cook about 100 grams pasta until al dente in a pot of properly salted water (1 to 2 tablespoons per 4 quarts). Drain and toss with the sauce quickly in the pan, and serve garnished with a little bit of fennel fronds.

 

Chickpea salad with leeks and celery

It started in Bologna. At Ristorante Da Fabio, they serve a salad of celery and parmigiano. That’s it. Dressed every so slightly with olive oil and lemon juice, it is the most exposed dish one could possibly imagine. When I take clients there, it always makes the deepest impression of any of the dishes. How could something so minimalistic provide so much flavor?

I had a similar experience recently at Razza, in Jersey City. I was with my son Peter, who loves chickpeas but is not an adventurous eater, and we ordered a little appetizer of chickpeas with scallions and parmigiano. Like the salad at Da Fabio, every aspect of the little minimalistic dish was perfect.

Both dishes inspired me to create a chickpea salad that would feature celery. It differs quite a bit from the dishes that inspired it (no parmigiano for example), but the defining concept is the same: a minimal number of ingredients assembled in perfect balance and harmony. It’s the sort of thing that inspires me most as a cook.

Here’s the version we settled upon for service at the restaurant last month. Perhaps it’s not quite as minimalistic as the dishes that inspired it, but it’s close. A big part of its success is dependent on the fresh celery we grow on the farm. This is not the mild, watery celery from California. It has intense aroma and a profusion of leaves, perfect for chopping fine and including in the salad. If you know anyone who grows celery, using fresh, local, aromatic celery will certainly enhance the dish. But if store-bought is the best you can do, be at peace with it. Ditto for the chickpeas. The best are bought dried, soaked overnight, and boiled until tender. But if you need to use canned chickpeas, don’t beat yourself up! Just make sure to get a good brand. To me, Goya is the best: perfectly seasoned and properly tender.

If you don’t owe a scale, go buy one now! It’s the best $30 you can spend for your kitchen.    Makes things simpler and more accurate.

Chickpea Salad with Celery and Leeks (makes 6 appetizer servings)

If using dried beans, soak them overnight if possible to reduce the cooking time. In the morning, replace most of the water with fresh, add salt, bring to a gentle boil, and simmer very gently until tender. Make sure to season the beans properly!! 1 pound (450 grams) of dried beans requires about 1 tablespoon of salt and will yield about 2.5 pounds  (1125 grams) of cooked beans. I cook my beans covered and then remove the lid near the end and reduce the water until it’s just above the level of the beans. If soaked, they should take 2 to 3 hours to become tender, but you need to check to be sure. Don’t go by the clock.

If using canned beans, rinse in fresh water. If they’re not tender enough, boil them for a bit. If not seasoned properly, fix it.

To make the salad, combine about 375 grams cooked chickpeas with 50 grams chopped celery and 50 grams chopped leeks (or scallions). Add 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 heaping tablespoon lemon juice, 1/2 teaspoon crushed, dried hot pepper, 50 grams olive oil, and a generous bit of chopped celery or parsley leaves.

The salad can be served at once or allowed to steep for several hours while the flavors meld. It could be refrigerated if necessary, but I would only do it as a last resort. Just before serving, taste and correct for seasoning (salt, lemon juice, etc.) and garnish with a drizzle of fresh olive oil and possibly some freshly ground black pepper.

Another way with asparagus

As soon as I wrote it, I knew it was a problem:

I only cook them one way: briefly boiled and sautéed in something savory. There are surely other ways to do it, but sometimes when one way works it’s all you need or want!

This, from my post on asparagus a few weeks ago. It was true. It really is the only way I’d ever really cooked asparagus. But as I wrote I thought: How lame is that. A cooking teacher and chef who only cooks asparagus one way!

It spurred me to action. I resolved to roast some asparagus, allowing the dry heat to work its magic on the asparagus, concentrating its flavor and hopefully slightly charring the exterior.

Many chefs and home cooks love roasting vegetables of all types. For reasons I can’t explain, I’ve been slow to adopt that method. I cook almost all of my vegetables with moist heat on the stove top. Of course, it’s simpler on the stove top if the oven’s not on, and quicker too.

But it seemed like time to begin roasting, and asparagus is what I had. The first attempt, following a standard roasting time of about 10 minutes at 400 degrees, was only semi-successful. With our just-harvested asparagus, the cooking time was too long and the asparagus was mush, a good reminder of how even well-intentioned recipes can go astray based on faulty assumptions. A second attempt with a 5 minute cooking time was just right. With week-old asparagus the 10 minute cooking time was better, showing just how much freshness affects not only flavor but also time needed to cook.

The asparagus was delicious, more moist than I would have thought from the dry heat and perhaps not that different from boiling and sautéing, but with just a slightly different character. If the oven’s already on, you can’t beat the simplicity. Season carefully with salt and pepper and first-rate olive oil and throw in the oven, the kind of minimalistic cooking I love so much.

 

 

 

on growing and cooking asparagus

May is one of my favorite months. The work of vegetable production in May can be oppressive, with never enough time to accomplish everything that must be done, but the month is redeemed by glorious weather and the presence of fresh asparagus.

I had always cooked and enjoyed asparagus, but it’s only when I started to harvest our own about four years ago that my enjoyment turned to obsession. Asparagus is one of those vegetables that is so different when freshly harvested that I’d rather go without for 11 months of the year than settle for the old, pale imitation one finds in the store. There aren’t many vegetables I feel that strongly about, but asparagus is one.

When it’s grown in fertile soil, freshly harvested, and cooked with care, asparagus has such a clean, fresh flavor; the opposite of the store-bought, strong-tasting, slimy asparagus that must be peeled and cooked with great care to make it delicious.

Much of the advice about selecting and prepping asparagus is all wrong, at least for freshly-harvested asparagus. Everyone says to look for the slender, delicate spears. But in my experience, it’s the biggest, fattest, meatiest ones (the kind you never see in the store) that provide the most pleasure. Most people say to partially peel the asparagus, especially on larger spears, but it’s completely unnecessary when the asparagus is fresh. I’ve seen moist cooking (steaming, boiling) times of 4 to 6 minutes, but even the thickest spears for me are ready in 2 minutes. Most say to trim off the woody bottom end, but that’s only necessary with asparagus which has begun to dry out or which was harvested too low to the ground instead of snapped where it’s naturally tender. Some people even buy the extraneous kitchen device known as an asparagus pot, where the spears cook upright in boiling water with only their tips out of the water so they don’t overcook. Good grief. No wonder some people find cooking asparagus intimidating!

Big, fat ones are the best!

I always encourage people to grow it if they can, but it’s a vegetable that requires patience and skill. The plants need about three years to establish themselves during which time they can’t be harvested much at all, but once established they continue to produce for up to 20 years! It’s the ultimate test of commitment, a long-term relationship second only to marriage. And like a marriage, inadequate preparation of the plot reduces chances of success. Soil must be fertile, high in organic matter, and weed-free. Keeping on top of weeds is the hardest part, and also like a marriage, small problems left unaddressed can fester into catastrophic failure!

But all the hard work is worth it once the asparagus is in the kitchen. I trim them all to a uniform 8 to 10 inches (depending on the size of my pan) and roughly sort them by size. I only cook them one way: briefly boiled and sautéed in something savory. There are surely other ways to do it, but sometimes when one way works it’s all you need or want!

Asparagus season is almost over here in Northeastern Pennsylvania, but there’s still a week or so to go if you know someone who grows it or someone who sells it fresh. Maybe  you’ll even be inspired to add it to your own garden! Just make sure to do the prep work. You’ll be in it for the long haul!

Sautéed Asparagus with Pancetta

1. Begin by trimming the asparagus to uniform lengths which just fit in your pot when laid horizontally. I trim to 8 inches and use a high-sided sauté pan. You could also use a soup pot of some kind, but whatever I use I only fill it with enough water to cover the asparagus by an inch or so.
2. In a separate pan I brown a little pancetta, or bacon, or guanciale in a little high-quality olive oil. The amount of meat, of course, is at your discretion. It can be a small flavoring or a major component of the finished dish. It will render fat perfect for sautéeing the asparagus, but if there’s way too much, pour off some of it.
3. When the meat has been lightly browned, remove from heat. To cook the asparagus, bring the water to a vigorous boil and salt it like pasta water (1 to 2 tablespoons for every 4 quarts). In my sauté pan I use 2 quarts of water and 1 tablespoon salt. Add the asparagus spears. They can be crowded in the water, but they do need a little room to move around and they should come back to a boil within 30 seconds or so when covered. In my pan I can cook up to 12 thick spears at a time.
4. Even my thickest spears cook in 2 minutes. When lifted from the pan, a spear should just slightly bend or droop. Just slightly. They’ll continue cooking while they cool. For me it’s always 2 minutes, but every kitchen is different.
5. Remove the asparagus to a cutting board and slice in half to yield 4 inch pieces. This is not necessary, of course, but they fit a little better on little plates this way. Immediately return them to the pan with the browned pancetta and toss quickly (just 15 seconds or so). It’s done off heat so it’s not really a sauté I guess, but it’s the closest description I can think of!
6. Even though cooked in salted water, the cooking time is so short that the asparagus will probably need a little more seasoning. I rarely salt any dish just before serving, but in this case I do, using coarse flakes of Maldon Salt.
7. Finish with a little drizzle of high-quality olive oil and freshly grated black pepper. Or perhaps go in a different direction with a little hot pepper and/or grated lemon zest.

 

a conversation with Rachel Roddy

Photo credit: Elena Heatherwick

Rachel Roddy is a British food writer, blogger, and the author of Five Quarters (in the US, My Kitchen in Rome) and Two Kitchens: Family Recipes from Sicily and Rome, as well as a weekly column in The Guardian. Rachel has lived in the Testaccio neighborhood of Rome for 13 years, and that neighborhood has been the inspiration for most of her writing. More recently, she and her family have been spending time in Sicily as well, based in the town of Gela, where her partner was born and still has relatives.

Rachel was gracious enough to be interviewed over lunch at one of her favorite trattorie in Testaccio, La Torricella, and the dishes we enjoyed feature prominently in our conversation. In the interview, we talk about what Rachel finds so compelling about Testaccio, why she prefers Roman trattorie to more formal restaurants, and the challenges and joys of raising her son in Italy.

______________________________________________________________________

Justin Naylor: Thanks for making time for this interview today, especially over lunch at this beautiful trattoria! What struck me when I saw your first cookbook was that it was very personal, while many cookbooks these days, however gorgeous, lack a strong sense of personality or identity. That was the thing that first drew me to your writing. I was wondering if that was intentional or just a subconscious expression of who you are?

Rachel Roddy: I began as a blogger, so that was where it came from. Sections of Five Quarters are lifted directly from my blog. Everything was edited, and bits were rewritten, and the recipes were tested, but essentially I was a blogger. I arrived in Rome in 2005, and began writing the blog online in 2008. Before that, I was keeping notebooks, and sort of mimicking the food writers that I like. I’ve always read a lot of food writing, as opposed to just recipe books, so I was very inspired by Jane Grigson and Elizabeth David, who always had a sense of narrative. Also Nigel Slater, whose book The Kitchen Diaries is a kind of cookbook in diary form. And the blogs I was reading were mostly American blogs. I still keep an eye on a young woman called Molly Wizenberg, who was a chef. It was narrative, telling a story into a recipe. That’s what my blog was based on, and that’s the strongest vein in Five Quarters. It’s a diary form, with recipes, and history, and geography woven in.

JN: Could you describe what the neighborhood of Testaccio is like, what brought you here, and what has kept you here for thirteen years?

RR: Well, I always say it’s shaped like a piece of cheese. It’s a very distinct geographical shape. This wedge, which is like one quarter of a wheel of cheese, is one of the quarters that I refer to in the title of my book. In 2005, I had been in Sicily and was living in Rome up near Termini, and I’d been going to language school. My best friend came to visit, and she wanted to come to Testaccio. I had read the name in books, but I had never been. I remember looking at it in the book, and I remember thinking of this cheese shape. So, we came to visit. We went to the old market, we sat in a bar called Zia Elena. I was still undecided about what I was going to do, whether I was going to go back to Sicily or go back to England. I was very undecided. She said, “You should stay here for a while.” That afternoon I went to an estate agent, and they had a small studio flat in the block that we had just been near, which was a block from the old market. I had to take a contract for a year, and I thought, Well, OK, I’ll do that.

JN: What was it in that day that was so powerful that made you immediately commit to staying for a year?

RR: Certainly the old market was wonderful. A new market has taken its place now, but the old market was strange, a sort of fortified bus shelter. It had been a street market, and then they covered it in the 1960s and ’70s – it had iron uprights and a glass roof, completely covered in leaves – it had a very incredible light, an almost Caravaggio-esque light, didn’t it? Did you ever go to the old market?

JN: I never had a chance, unfortunately.

RR: It was a wonderful old market, lots of farmers selling their stuff there; lots of butcher stalls, of course, because of the legacy of the slaughterhouse in Testaccio; fish stalls; it was just a very lively, atmospheric market. Lots of local shops; it felt like a little village in the middle of Rome. I think other villages do exist, but it was the first time that I really felt a sense of it, that this was a place, and people lived here. It’s very linear, Testaccio, with straight roads, unlike most of Rome. It’s on a grid system. It’s modern, only 130 years old. So, my initial impression was one of almost shock. But then quite quickly you get the sense of community; there’s lots of schools here, there’s local shops, there’s the market. I see people still every day that I probably saw that first time, thirteen years ago. I suppose you can get that anywhere, but it had a very strong sense of place, and I thought, I like that, and I’ll stay here. Thirteen years later I’m still here, and very settled.

JN: You’ve written that in the first few weeks here you met more neighbors and shopkeepers than you had met in London in five or ten years, which is remarkable. I can understand the appeal of that sort of place.

RR: And I’m quite chatty! I mean, I’m very aware of my own romanticizing of a kind of “something else.” That’s something I do struggle with. As an outsider, the Rome you “want to find” – I found that Rome. But, yes, I did – it’s like a small village really, and it has that mentality. Of course, it’s more complicated than that, particularly as the area changes, but yes, that’s the strongest sense I think you get from Testaccio. And it’s a very inclusive area, it’s always been an area of stranieri [foreigners] – it’s not the real Rome, these were all newcomers. It’s now a lot of third-generation Testaccini, like Augusto here who owns this trattoria.

JN: When you first started meeting people, as a foreigner and guest, you felt welcome, there wasn’t a lot of awkward suspicion of an outsider? Because, as you say, it’s always been a neighborhood of outsiders and foreigners.

RR: Yes, maybe. I suppose there was – there always is – a level of suspicion of newcomers, suspicion of your motive, maybe. But I just didn’t care! Especially when I started writing about it – because I suppose in a way I made my foreignness useful, and gave myself a purpose, didn’t I? So, from quite early on I was observing Testaccio, even though I was living here. My foreignness was a part of it, that became an advantage. And now, of course, it’s become my job. It’s my job to be curious – maybe, in a way, to be an outsider who’s inside. I’m more aware of that than ever, especially since [my son] Luca, who isn’t an ousider, was born here, which is interesting.

JN: What sorts of changes have you seen in the neighborhood in thirteen years?

RR: Lots of changes. Lots of renovation. Lots of shops that have closed, or changed completely.

JN: Gentrification?

RR: Yeah, there is; I don’t want to be kind of “doom, doom,” about it – Italy is struggling at the moment, and there’s a housing crisis in Testaccio. Prices have really gone down. Testaccio has a quite interesting demographic. There’s a lot of council housing, still – and it’s a lot of council housing in the hands of grandchildren. So, grandparents would have rented the house, then they would have had children, one of whom would probably have grown up to live there. Now, there are a lot of empty flats in Testaccio that are lived in by one grandchild. People are finding it’s difficult to sell. There’s quite a lot of empty property; very, very high rents here. So, in a way, I think Testaccio is struggling – but yet, you know, trattorias continue to thrive. Probably most of the trattorias I’ve known and loved for thirteen years are still here. Better ones are evolving. But certain shops still thrive. We live above a bakery called Passi, which is this wonderful Roman forno. That’s still one of the busiest bakeries in Rome, and I think one of the best bakeries in Rome. It’s a working family, opened in the 1970s. And that thrives, and it’s lovely – people drive from Prati to buy their pizza bianca. So, it’s lovely to see traditions. And I join in; I always feel a bit of a cliché, but I do – I absolutely relish these traditions and celebrate them and am happy to spend my money and live, and for Luca to grow up eating pizza bianca and mortadella and carciofi when they’re in season. It’s lovely. It feels important; it feels precious, really.

JN: So when you first arrived, you were learning Italian, and probably working here and there to pay the rent. What led you to start the blog in 2008?

RR: I was keeping diaries, and a lot of those were focused on food. But it wasn’t even a really conscious thing. I didn’t really know what I was doing; I played around a bit. Some posts were just a recipe; I just wanted somewhere to record them. A friend of mine who worked for Marie Claire online said, “Start a blog.” I had never heard the word before, and it took me a couple of years to do it. But I was reading blogs, and it was a combination of factors. I had always enjoyed writing, I had always written, but I suppose in a way starting a blog taught me to write. I had studied English, but then I had gone to drama school. I had quite a lot of experience writing, but not formal experience. I hadn’t gone to university to study English, which was initially what I thought I would do. I felt like a bit of a failure in that sense. But having a blog taught me to write. I still struggle with believing that I’m a writer, really. I don’t really consider myself a writer; I suppose I consider myself somebody who writes recipes with stories. I still struggle with that. But it was quite an organic thing, I think, starting the blog. I read some of those [old posts] and I go, It’s just embarrassing. But it was a document, and I just wanted to write these things down. I was fascinated by the food, and it was such a good way to look at the city; I thought, I have to write this down.

JN: At what point did you realize that people were paying attention, and how did that affect how you thought about the project?

RR: I learned from other people; I copied, I mimicked what other people were doing. Of course, then people start commenting. Quite early on, people obviously saw potential because quite a few people got in touch with me and said, You should write something, you should write your memoir, you should write more recipes. Food is at the heart of it, the recipes and the history and the geography. My number-one inspiration has always been and remains Jane Grigson, who was wonderful. She died [in 1990], but her work lives on. She wrote these beautiful essays about food, and they had everything in them: history, geography, politics.

JN: In moving from the blog to the book [Five Quarters, aka My Kitchen in Rome]: did you work hard to make connections to make that happen, or were you approached with confidence from an agent or publisher to take it to another level?

RR: The book was pretty much done in the blog; there were loads of articles. Initially it was a bit more general, but I was really starting to focus in on Roman food, and it was Testaccio-centric. In the beginning, it was like a black hole. I didn’t even really know what I was doing. Back then I didn’t have a guide book, I didn’t have a smartphone. It was like I was plunging my hand into something without looking. But I was getting a sense of discovering Roman food, and I’d covered a lot of classic Roman recipes, I had a nice narrative around it. When I was approached about doing a book, I still didn’t have a title. I was still doing my blog very devotedly. I wrote a blog post, and it became the introduction to the book.

JN: Someone noticed your work and had confidence in it.

RR: It was Elizabeth Hallett, my publisher, who is just wonderful, wonderful. She’s quite visionary, and she saw it. But it was all there.

JN: I think you imply in the introduction to the American edition that you weren’t that crazy about the title of that edition [My Kitchen in Rome]? Five Quarters is a wonderful title, and it’s exactly right. But I understand why an American publisher would want something different.

RR: Yeah, they were worried. But there are five reasons for calling it Five Quarters. There was the reference to the quinto quarto tradition in Roman cooking; the reference to the shape of Testaccio; the reference to the general resourcefulness of Roman cooking per se; there was a reference to the five parts of an Italian meal; and then the most important fifth quarter is you, because you’re going to cook the recipes.

JN: You mentioned the quinto quarto tradition, and you also mentioned that when you first came to Testaccio, you knew nothing about Roman cooking. Can you tell us about your first impressions of Roman cooking and the cooking of Testaccio, and what you eventually found compelling about it?

RR: I just thought it was so… salty! I thought it was so salty and fatty. I mean, not in a bad way. I always remember being in a restaurant in Trastevere, sitting one very warm night — it must have been the first summer. I had gricia, an old-school gricia. We’d been in a bar before and we’d had peanuts, and I think we’d had prosciutto that day – I remember feeling like a dog! Just so much salt and pork. Then I remember talking to a friend later, a really good cook, and them saying, “Well, that’s the thing, it’s the pecorino, it’s the guanciale, it’s these elements.” But yes, it was so beige! Now, of course, I sit and I tell people, Have a gricia, have a carbonara, Amatriciana, etc. At the time, they were just kind of coming. I remember having artichokes, which were just very, like, that kind of dull khaki – wonderful, but very overcooked. Puntarelle – I really like anchovies, all those strong flavors. I couldn’t – it just seemed so kind of plain and functional. I quite liked it, but I couldn’t quite get a handle on it. And then, of course, there’s the quinto quarto and pajata, which I was interested in. Roman food can be a bit dirty in a way – I mean that in a good way.

JN: I know what you mean, yes. Not literally, but —

RR: It’s gutsy, isn’t it?

JN: Yes! Literally gutsy.

RR: For example, those kind of stracotti stews, and really cooked vegetables. Then slowly, slowly, I started eating in people’s homes, as well, and then I started eating at a little tavola calda called Volpetti. That was really a vital part of my education.

JN: Your first reaction to Roman food was, This is salty, it’s porky, it’s beige, it’s plain. How would you define it today if someone asked you, What is Roman cooking like?

RR: Salty, porky, beige. [Laughter] Romans do have wonderful greens because it’s so temperate. Things like puntarelle, the kind of misticanza with little cherry tomatoes in it, the vegetable side dishes. The wonderful spinach.

JN: So the beige starts to turn to green, if you dig a little deeper.

RR: Yes, and then I started to understand the minestra. Because in the beginning, there’s pasta e fagioli, pasta e ceci, all these beige soups. It was almost like I could start seeing detail. There was also something about me being able to start seeing detail in the city I was living in. Before, remember, I didn’t speak any Italian, so it was all a big blur. It was all a big salty blur! Things just got a bit clearer. I think that was how I understood it. I remember thinking about the different sorts of pasta e ceci, some with the anchovies in the bottom, some without, as if things suddenly had color. The artichokes could be cooked differently: they were beige, but they’re kind of purple before they’re trimmed. And then, of course, being very inspired, starting to have courage – I’m quite a capable cook – being able to make recipes my own. For example, the soup I made today; there are many versions of how to make this broccoli soup. I like something quite brothy. I’m constantly inspired; in fact, I’m more inspired than I ever have been by Roman food. I just find it wonderful: I love the ingredients, I love the simplicity, I love the way that Romans make minestra or a broth, whether it’s bits of fish suspended in a broth, or egg yolks and breadcrumbs for the straciatella, or whether it’s the way they do wonderful things with artichokes, or the way they treat anchovies, baked anchovies. I just feel I have more to learn than ever about it.

JN: Could you take one or two traditional dishes that you especially love and say a little more about how they’re prepared?

RR: I do love that whole family of bean, legume, and lentil soups and stews, the various ways to make them. They say there are as many ways as cooks, but with pasta e ceci you cook some chickpeas so you get that nice, cloudy broth, and then in another pan you make a little soffrito. You could use carrot, celery, and onion, or you could just do garlic and anchovies, with the garlic just squashed, so it’s just a very sunny fragrance, as opposed to an angry one. And then, a bit of rosemary.

JN: Almost always rosemary in pasta e ceci in Rome, right?

RR: The thing about herbs is, you do find these recipes all over Italy, and the defining ingredient is often the herb. So, in Sicily you’d put oregano in, in Tuscany you’d put sage – I’m generalizing – and in Rome you often have rosemary. It’s amazing how that can completely transform a dish. Romans use lots of rosemary, lots of mint. So, you’ve got your soffrito, and then maybe a couple of tomatoes or a spoonful of concentrate, and then you unite the chick peas in their cloudy broth, and let that bubble for about twenty minutes.

JN: Using the broth from the chickpeas, as opposed to a separate vegetable or meat broth?

RR: You could make a meat broth, but the fringe benefit of soaking your own beans is that you get this broth. Unite the two, and then in the last ten minutes, throw in a handful of pasta, so you’ve got this enriched, herb-scented broth. You could purée some of the soup to make it creamy, you could pass it through a food mill, you could have it brothy, you could put in more tomato if you want it blushing more. The possibilities are endless. Very similar for pasta e fagioli, pasta and beans – and the same with pasta and lentils. You could, of course, have guanciale in the foundations, if you wanted. I love those.

Of pastas, I love carbonara, Amatriciana. But probably my favorite is cacio e pepe, which is pasta with pecorino cheese and black pepper.

JN: There are different ways to make cacio e pepe; it can be a disaster if you don’t know what you’re doing. The technique, compared to a lot of pasta dishes, is really difficult and important.

RR: It’s really difficult!

JN: Can you walk us through how you make cacio e pepe?

RR: Cacio e pepe is an absolute bugger. In fact, I’m writing about it for The Guardian now, and I’ve been asking around in restaurants. It’s pasta, cheese, and black pepper, and then you emulsify it with the pasta cooking water. It’s really tricky to make. I think the best way to do it is to make it for two. Because the cheese goes into clumps, the best way to do it is this: you get a warm bowl, you cook your pasta and drain it and you save the pasta cooking water. You put a ladleful of pasta cooking water in the bottom of this bowl. You then throw on your cooked pasta – a fresh pasta like tonnarelli, because that’s got very starchy water, and fresh pasta’s got lots of semolina clinging to it. Then you put loads of cheese. You want it grated fine; not using a micro plane, you want that old-fashioned bugger of a grater.

JN: When I first started making it, that’s exactly what happened: I would just used the regular micro plane, and it would clump. It’s really the powder grater that you want, so I’m glad to hear you say that. It’s such a important detail, because without that, maybe some people can do it, but not me. The powder is the essential part.

RR: It’s the bastard side of the grater that you never want to use. So, use the bastard side of the grater. In Felice, a very famous trattoria just where we live, they do it at the table, they do individual servings. So, you toss – more cheese, maybe a bit more water – and a spoon and a fork is the very best for tossing. I want to do a little film; I’ve resisted writing about about it, actually, because it’s really hard to do well.

JN: And it’s hard to learn from a book. I learned to cook from books; I didn’t learn to cook growing up, I didn’t learn to cook in Italy. I mostly benefited from the writings of Marcella Hazan.

RR: Yes, I really like her too.

JN: That’s how I learned to cook. But as much as I benefited from that, it’s no way to learn to cook. Even though I love cookbooks, and obviously you love writing, learning to cook from a book is a very strange way to learn to cook, as opposed to learning to cook at the side of someone who knows what they’re doing.

RR: And of course, here, Romans eat Roman food. Of course, there’s other things, there’s wonderful Indian, Thai, Ethiopian, Japanese food, though not like London. But essentially, Romans eat Roman food, and it’s what’s around, so people are still making these dishes and they have very strong opinions about it. I’m quite self-conscious, I think, because I’m aware that writing for a newspaper and feeling like I say the same thing every day, that I do maybe lean into cliché. But I do go to the market every morning; it’s my job now, it’s my privilege to do that. I go to the same stall, I buy vegetables and every time I buy something there’s some advice, either from Filippo, the guy who sells me vegetables, or somebody shopping. Chances are, the people shopping there will be making Roman-style cooking. Now it’s carciofi [artichoke] season, and everyone’s cooking. Romans cook carciofi alla Romana, and everyone has an opinion. I suppose it’s like the traditional cooking of anywhere, but it still reigns supreme here. I have to remind myself; I’ve had a lot of just going back and listening to people, letting people show me how to cook things. I haven’t done enough of that lately, and I’m about to start doing more again – just going and watching people cook. It’s funny – sometimes people have shown me how to do things that I knew probably better than they did, not because I’m better than them, but just because I make them more. But it didn’t matter, I just need to shut up and watch, because you always learn something.

JN: By the way, this carciofo we’re eating is delicious.

RR: I love this trattoria; not everyone does. It’s never going to be a perfect trattoria, or particularly trendy.

JN: Those who aren’t as enthusiastic about it, what is their criticism?

RR: Sometimes it can be a bit school-dinnerish, maybe, especially if it gets busy, and Augusto can be a bit brusque in his manner if he doesn’t know you. The menu never changes. But I think he does certain things very well. I think his artichokes are delicious, his anchovies. He goes to my fish guy. Really old-fashioned ways of cooking, though, like boiled cod and potatoes, and certain things on certain days. But I like it very much, we come here a lot. Luca’s six, he’s grown up coming here. I think his fried anchovies are some of the best.

JN: Speaking of Luca, as you said, he’s not an outsider. You still feel like an outsider, but he was born and raised here. What have been some of the joys and also some of the challenges of raising your son here? Did you wonder, when he was born, whether you wanted to return to England?

RR: I suppose it did cross my mind, whether we would stay or not. I never really imagined that we would leave. It’s how I imagined: he’s born into this little villagey world. We live in a very geographically clear area, the boundaries are clear. He now goes to school on the Aventine Hill, so we go out of Testaccio. It’s beautiful; he goes to the most beautiful school right in front of the Giardino Lidia Paranchi. It’s a state school. We walk up there every day, we walk back down, we cross via Mammarata. We come to Testaccio, and the first thing we see is the piazza. The streets are punctuated with bars that we go to. I suppose, like me, he’s been born with this sense of place. We cycle and walk everywhere. He’s very clear about the boundaries, he knows the area. There’s a local library. I suppose children have a clear sense of their surroundings, but he must be very aware of where we live, where the forno is – I think life here, especially around food, is very traditional. Children, of course, often appreciate it more than adults. Children are very welcome in restaurants. They’re expected to behave well, but you know they just are. The children will be fed first – the first thing they say is Red or white pasta for the child? And it will be there. Children are accomodated in that way, so I think Luca has grown up with that sense.

JN: And he’s an adventurous eater? He’s only six…

RR: He’s being a bit of a pain in the ass at the moment, but I’m hoping it’s a phase. But, yeah, he is. Luca loves going to England. He has no snobbism about that and I don’t either, but he says, “Mum, these oranges have no sunshine.” You know?

JN: Is there anything that he can’t get here, that you wish he had, that he would have in England?

RR: I worry about his school; I worry about the traditional nature of the education here. He’s quite rebellious, Luca. I think if you’re good, you can thrive. Luca is quite cheeky, he’s quite naughty, he’s quite rebellious. A good English friend of mine runs the English school; when he met Luca – this was as a friend, not as a headmaster seeing a potential student – he said, “Please send Luca to me.” His view was, Luca will struggle in the state system here. He’s quite a little – he’s a cheeky monkey. And also, he’s bilingual, so he’s struggling. And he’s not reading yet; he’s six, so actually I’ve got all sorts of concerns about that but I’m not letting them get out of perspective. Schools are struggling economically here, massively. They don’t have facilities. I go back and I see my sister’s kids at a school in London – a very, very good one, but a state school – and it almost makes me weep, the kind of facilities the kids have there. But at the same time I know that Luca has other things here, and we have such a good quality of life here. We live a good, good life, and very happy. I don’t find life in Rome stressful, the way I found life in London. The pace of life here is completely different. It’s not just my choice to live a different pace of life, it’s the way life is here.

JN: Because your partner is Sicilian, you now spend quite a bit of time in Sicily. Could you say a little about how Sicily is a contrast to your life in Testaccio and what convinced you all to start spending more time there?

RR: Vincenzo was born in a town called Gela, which is on the south coast, a very industrial town.

JN: I think you said in your book, “…known for the Mafia and oil refineries.” Just to dispel any romantic notions!

RR: Really, really shocking. Interesting town – one of the first colonized towns [by the Greeks]. Kind of disappeared under the Roman empire, but then was very important during the Arab reign and then during the Normans. In the 1950s, they built an oil refinery and it became the tenth-biggest town in Italy in the course of about five years. You can see that – the town exploded. It’s kind of a tragedy, really, Gela. It’s been used as a case study for economic development without any growth whatsoever.

JN: So, the kind of place you usually think of people wanting to flee, whereas you have decided the opposite, to actually make a commitment to that place.

RR: Well, the thing is, Vincenzo’s grandparents were there; his grandfather was a tomato farmer. They farmed, they were incredibly traditional. In a way, they were a typical Gelese family. His mum and dad both went to work for the oil refinery – in a way that was their escape, but in a way it killed the town. The house was empty; all the cousins own the house. It’s an extraordinary town, Gela. I just feel I’ve scratched the surface. We’ve taken over the house. We’d like eventually to live in Sicily, I think. I think we’ll probably move there full-time. This is kind of the starting point. We opened up the house; I want to write more about Sicilian food, Vincenzo wants to spend time there, see some of his elderly relatives. Even though he came to Rome when he was twelve, he grew up with long summers in Sicily. So, yes, we’ve been looking after the house, which is quite a struggle.

JN: That’s remarkable to hear, that as much as you’ve come to love Testaccio, the pull of Sicily is strong enough to even move permanently.

RR: The idea is that we’ll always have a base here. We have this little studio flat here. We’ll hopefully buy something in the country, and start spending more time there. I’d like a garden. Maybe not in Gela but probably on that coast. The temptation is to explore a bit more.

JN: You mentioned the Mafia influence, which of course is a sad reality in many parts of Italy, sometimes on the surface, sometimes hidden deep below the surface. How have you personally come to terms with that aspect of life there?

RR: My experience is very much seeing how a town has been damaged by the last hundred years. I don’t think I’ve done justice to Gela yet, honestly. Good lenses to look at the city through are, for example, what’s happening with tomato farming. Sicily is like a fairground mirror on the whole of Italy: everything is exaggerated, including corruption. The south coast is where all the boats are arriving from Lampedusa; there’s a huge amount of immigration. In Gela, we hear these terrible stories, but in fact the Gelese are extraodinarily accomodating. My brother-in-law, who is such a simple man, such a good man, he’s working with young refugees, and they’ve got them at the house. They’re the ones welcoming boats. Yes, there’s a lot of hostility about refugees but at the same time the Gelese are coping with it every single day. There’s so much happening there, but good and bad.

JN: What’s an example of the corruption in the tomato farming? Is it in the exploitation of labor?

RR: Yes.

JN: So that Romans, or whoever, can have tomatoes cheaper than they should be?

RR: Absolutely. The demand for small, sweet, on-the-vine tomatoes, all year round (by Italians, mainly) has completely transformed farming. It’s an area of intensive greenhouse farming. I was reading in The Guardian about Romanian women being kept in almost slave-like conditions.

JN: And that’s where the Mafia comes in, because obviously it’s against the law to do that, but they find a way to circumvent the law.

RR: Exactly. The Mafia is so part of the fabric of society, and has been since the 1960s and ’70s. Gela was known as being completely controlled by the Mafia, and Vincenzo’s parents left because of it. They will never go back. Sometimes you can look at Gela – and I’m looking at a very negative side of it – when I say I love the town, there’s lots of relatives that live there – but actually when you go, there’s nothing hopeful. There’s no hotels in Gela, there’s all these half-finished projects. You realize that, to keep the status quo, anything that could possibly involve making money is sabotaged. It’s as though people keep things at a base level.

JN: The control comes first, as it might in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan – keeping the status quo, as you say, is more important than anything else.

RR: On one level it’s really upsetting. On the other, there are lots of young people, and there are new initiatives, land that’s been confiscated from the Mafia. There are these new laws by the rather charismatic mayor of Palermo. There are things happening. I have felt, much more than Rome, the need to understand things better there. It feels like such a vanity, but I would like to understand a bit more. The way that I can do it is to write some pieces about tomatoes and oranges – taking the lens of food, but as a way of understanding more [about Sicily]. And also, immigration. It seems now to be the point in my career where I can start trying to understand things better, but rather than trying to understand the whole story, looking at it through a specific lens. Tomatoes seems like one, because Vincenzo’s parents were tomato farmers. Through storytelling: that always seems the best way.

JN: This soup we’re eating is delicious, and you mentioned a few times that what defines Augusto’s cooking here is that it’s no different from the cooking that he or his nonna are doing at home. I wonder if you can talk a little about the importance of home cooking in Italy, and how home cooking differs from restaurant cooking. Maybe in the best cases, it doesn’t differ – that’s my perspective, that I learned from Marcella.

RR: I suppose you would look at the different sorts of places to eat, and their history. In the way I understand it, Rome has always been a city where people have come and needed shelter and something to eat, because it’s a city of pilgrims, particularly in the last 300 years and after the unification of Italy. Osterias, the way I understand it, were originally a bed and a place for your horse. You would probably get something to drink, and you might get something to eat. That was where the osterias came from, and they were essentially places to drink. I’ve always said it’s better to compare osterias and trattorias with pubs and cafes than restaurants. Because they are really functional places. My granny had a pub, a wonderful pub in Manchester. Trattorias remind me much more of that than of a restaurant. Trattorias were, essentially, people’s homes where people had home restaurants in the beginning. They were absolutely extensions of people’s homes; it would be mom or dad in the kitchen, or grandma, and mom or dad out front. They would essentially be serving traditional, local, pub-style, homestyle food, and that’s the spirit that lives on in places like this. And it’s the reason I love La Toricella. It’s still Augusto in the kitchen – with his wonderful Bangledeshi chef, whom he treats brilliantly, another reason to love this place – and he makes homestyle, Roman and Abruzzese food for anyone who cares to come.

JN: Of course, some people in the US might wonder why one would go out to eat if it’s the same sort of food one would cook at home.

RR: Yes, some would say that. I follow a lot of food people in London who are going out to these fancy restaurants and lots of ethnic restaurants. I love that you come here and there are tableclothes and proper glasses, but I don’t mind that I’ll get the food here that I would make at home. There are about four trattorias we come to and I’ve been coming to this one forever, and I love the fact that I eat the same sorts of things.

JN: Sure. Even a talented cook wants to go out and relax and have a night off, and yet enjoy the comfortable flavors of home. And it’s hard to cook and entertain at the same time, of course. A moment ago you coined a wonderful phrase that I think I have to start using: “chef-y” food. How would you define or describe “chefy” food?

RR: Well there are certain techniques. I think of home food as being the most simple and basic preparations, while for a chef the food would be elevated to a more elegant level. There might be double-filtered broths, or instead of poaching a whole fish as Agosto has done here they might pan-fry fillets of fish for a more elegant presentation. That kind of food is lovely, but it is rarely how I want to eat. And [my partner] Vincenzo hates it.

JN: What about it is off-putting to him?

RR: He loves delicious food, but not anything that looks messed around with. I know I’m going to sound like a twat; I love the efforts and the skill of chefs, but when it looks tortured on the plate, it just doesn’t give me any pleasure. I want lovely food and I want it to taste delicious, but not fancy. People sometimes say I’m a sort of pretentious reverse snob, but I can’t stand food that is exclusive.

JN: I get it. There are some people who enjoy wearing tuxedos or evening dresses, but most of us would rather not dress that way, at least not often. I certainly like to dress nicely – not sweatpants or ratty old t-shirts – but you can do that without going to the point that the clothing seems or feels stiff or excessive.

RR: That’s nice, yes.

JN: And of course with both food and clothing there’s a continuum and the edges blur. You used the word “tortured,” which is perfect. It’s just not at ease.

RR: Which maybe has to do with us, doesn’t it? Just our preferences. And I like the tuxedo metaphor. I just happen to loath food snobbism, and in England at the moment there’s a bit of backlash. Of course we need to address food banks and the fact that people are starving, but there’s a great polemic lately. For example, recently there was an article about a place selling “cauliflower steaks”, essentially slices of cauliflower. There was uproar about it, because it did cost about three times what it should cost. It opened up a whole polemic with people being very righteous about the fact that we should be preparing our own vegetables. Then of course, people came in and said, Well, what if you’re old and arthritic? Like any discussion, there were many, many sides to it. Of course I say to people, Prepare your own vegetables! Of course, there are gray areas. There’s my grandma: she’s an old woman and loves buying individual portions of cut-up vegetables. There’s just all these opinions about cooking from scratch. You have to be so careful. I firmly believe home cooking from scratch is a skill we should all be encouraged to learn and teach and share, and I think it’s something that still exists here in Italy. This basic, intuitive cooking.

JN: I completely know what you’re talking about when you describe this sort of cooking as “plain.” But at least in America, if I talk that way, there would be misunderstanding. In America, for example, “plain cooking” might imply something like poorly seasoned, flavorless or tough steak and potatoes. Or overcooked pasta with canned sauce. Or maybe the old stereotype of dreadful, bland English food. That could be described as “plain” too. So how do we distinguish between that and Italian cooking, simple but delicious?

RR: I suppose if you look at traditional English cooking from 200 years ago, you might find it to have more in common with Italian cooking. But one difference is the sheer abundance of types of ingredients in the Mediterranean. There were olives and grapes, grains, sugar from the dried figs and raisins. The riches here are quite extraordinary. It has evolved into having good taste, which is so characteristic of Italians. I see my son being taught it at school. It’s completely different from England. I mean, the kids at school here are given a five-course meal. They have pasta, and it’s red or it’s pesto, and they have their bread and their napkin.

JN: So it’s every day, and it’s five courses?

RR: Yes. You see these little creatures are learning to eat with bread and a fork. They’re learning that bread is always on the table, and water is there, and their pasta will be red, white, or pesto, and they’ll have their secondo, meat or fish, or a frittata. My son says “Fa schiffo la frittata,” [“Frittatas are disgusting,”] but they learn. They’re getting chicory, they’re getting fennel. In some English private schools, they might have wonderful food from organic kitchens, but maybe they’re not taught about food culture the way they are here. And now Luca eats just like Vincenzo. Where’s the fork, where’s the napkin? That’s not me teaching him; it’s his school. And they don’t always like it – chicory for example – but they keep giving it to them. It’s not perfect – I mean, there’s the obesity in the South – but the attempt at developing a healthy food culture and healthy rituals begins at home and is reinforced in the schools.

JN: I wasn’t aware there was obesity in the South. What’s up with that?

RR: I suppose it’s the industrialization of food which is causing problems.

JN: More in the South?

RR: There’s always been a huge dependence on carbohydrates in the South – think of pizza in Naples – but it’s also industrial snacks. Sugary snacks and drinks.

Photo of our fish soup, taken by Rachel

JN: To wrap up, I’d like to ask about salt. The soup we’ve been enjoying during this interview has been seasoned perfectly. If Augusto did everything else right by choosing the best ingredients and cooking them with care, but if got the seasoning wrong, the dish wouldn’t be pleasurable. I think of this a lot with cookbooks, too. No matter how carefully you write a recipe, if your readers don’t use salt correctly, the dish won’t meet its potential.

RR: Absolutely. For me it’s salting in small amounts but often. That’s something I learned here. When I do my initial soffrito, I’ll always add a little pinch of salt. And I’ll salt all throughout the cooking. I have three types: a very fine salt, a coarse one for pasta water, and English Maldon salt for finishing. I think it’s true: it’s how you bring out flavor. When you salt lentils, it makes them taste more like lentils. It’s a magic moment. I know you admire Marcella Hazan, and she’s such a good teacher on this. When I’m working on something, I might check out the versions from ten different books, and Marcella is always in that group. There’s a good chance I won’t follow any of them, but I’ll look.

JN: Of course.

RR: Her books are especially inspiring, and I’ll often look at her writing if I want to be inspired.

JN: Like your book, her books are personal. You get a strong sense of who she was. A strong voice. And it is inspiring.

RR: She’s a pragmatic writer, but there’s real beauty in the writing as well. There’s no pretention or froth, which makes me seem a little bit frilly in my own writing. But nothing gives me more pleasure than reading cookbooks, both for the recipes and the stories. To see what different cooks think about bay leaves, and what they want to say about bay leaves. It’s always been my favorite sort of reading.

JN: That’s a great place to wrap up, I think. Thanks again.

spaghetti with pancetta & onion

We don’t serve much dried boxed pasta – spaghetti, penne, etc. – at the restaurant. This isn’t because it’s inherently lesser in quality than fresh pasta like fettuccine and ravioli (it’s definitely not!), but its long cooking time makes it hard to fit into the context of our multi-course meals, modest kitchen, and decision to work without employees.

When we’re cooking for ourselves and the family, high-quality dried pasta can be just the thing, especially at the end of a long, busy day. Even we can’t always find time to spend an hour preparing dinner. The most important thing when buying dried pasta is to make sure to buy imported Italian brand. Although there is a wide range of quality, even in Italy, Italian-made pasta is far more likely to cook correctly than domestic. I’ve always taught this in my classes, but my conviction was strengthened recently when I had no choice but to cook a famous domestic brand and ended up with gluey mess impossible to properly toss with its sauce. The brand De Cecco is available at almost every supermarket these days, and though it’s not absolute top quality, it’s very good and readily available.

When I was first learning to cook from Marcella Hazan‘s wonderful books, I loved one of her sauces made with slow-cooked onions. A heaping mass of onions are placed in a covered pot and slow-cooked for an hour, then quickly browned over medium-high heat and tossed with parsley and parmigiano. It’s a great sauce, and wonderful for vegetarians.

I hadn’t made it in probably 10 years, but something got me to thinking about it the other day. But I didn’t have an hour, and I also had some lovely home-made pancetta in the fridge as well. I decided to make this variation, and I’m so glad I did! This is one of those sauces that cooks so quickly you can begin it after putting the pasta in the water to boil.

Spaghetti with Pancetta and Onions (Serves 2)

1. Begin by by dicing about 25 grams (¼ cup or so) pancetta, the best quality you can get hold of.
2. Brown in a little olive oil and then add about a cup of thinly sliced onion and ½ teaspoon or so hot pepper. I cook exclusively with sweet onions, but it’s not make or break.
3. Stir everything around and add a generous pinch of salt. Salting correctly really is the most important part of cooking after all. Reduce the heat to low and cook for about 10 minutes.
4. When your pasta is nearly ready (100 to 120 grams for two people, cooked al dente in luxuriously salted water), raise the heat to high on the onions and cook until they’re lightly browned but not too dark. Add a tablespoon or two of the pasta cooking water to loosen things up. Add some parsley, chopped or whole.
5. Drain the pasta and immediately add it to the sauce pan, quickly tossing the pasta with the sauce to make them one.
6. Garnish with parmigiano-reggiano and a little benediction of fresh olive oil, and serve immediately!

tiramisu, a new approach

A lovely Italian moka pot

One of the first blog posts I ever wrote was on tiramisu. My introduction to making Tiramisu came through the recipe of Giuliano Hazan in his useful book Every Night Italian. What I liked about it so much was its use of Strega as a liquor, which Giuliano says is classic, even though I’ve never come across anyone else using it. I made that tiramisu for years. I loved it, friends loved  it, and customers loved it.

But it’s natural and healthy to evolve, and over the years my approach to tiramisu has been transformed significantly. I no longer use any liquor. I make it in individual serving goblets instead of a large cake.  I have reduced the ratio of ladyfingers and increased the ratio of mascarpone cream. And finally, I found a workaround to the problem of using raw eggs (even though fear of raw eggs is largely unfounded). All of these changes, except perhaps the last, reflect changing practices in Italy as well. More and more the tiramisu I make resembles the tiramisu I’m served in Rome, Bologna, and Venice.

There’s nothing wrong with the version I used to make, but change and variation are usually healthy. Here’s how I make it now.

Tiramisu (Makes 18 portions)

1. Begin by beating 6 large eggs yolks with the whisk attachment in a stand mixture until thick and pale yellow, about 3 to 5 minutes.
2. While the yolks are whisking, heat 150 grams sugar with 100 grams water over high heat until boiling vigorously.
3. Very slowly, drizzle the boiling sugar syrup into the egg yolks with the whisk going at high speed. This should raise the temperature of the yolks to 140 degrees or so, cooking them without curdling.
4. Turn down the speed one or two settings, and beat for a full 15 minutes until light and very much expanded.
5. Add 2 half pound packages of mascarpone, and then add 100 grams of sugar dissolved in a cup of cream (225 grams).
6. Mix until thick, about a minute or two depending on the speed. Turn off the mixer.
7. Scoop about 2 tablespoons of mascarpone cream into each of the 18 dessert goblets. I use a small ice cream scoop.
8. Prepare a cup or so of very strong coffee, preferably with an Italian moka pot, a staple of home coffee making in Italy.
9. Cut 18 dried ladyfingers in half and briefly soak 2 halves at a time in the coffee, adding a little milk if desired. Then place each pair of halves in each of the 18 goblets. Each brand of ladyfingers varies in how much soaking is needed. The temperature of the coffee also makes a profound difference. Sometimes 2 seconds is too much. Other times 5 seconds is not enough. It just takes a little practice and experience. What you don’t want is for the ladyfinger to be sodden at this point. If it is moistened on the other portion but still hard inside, the moisture will wick its way into the center and tenderize the whole cookie over the course of several hours.
10. Add about 1/4 cup of mascarpone cream (I use a large ice cream scoop) on top, smoothing it out with a spoon.
11. Finish by dusting with cocoa. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerated for 12 to 24 hours.
12. Serve cool, but not right from the fridge.

 

rigatoni with chicken liver and tomatoes

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chicken liver, rigatoni

I know… you can’t really see the chicken livers, but they’re there!

My last published recipe was for chicken liver pâté. It’s a great way to use up a good number of chicken livers, but not so useful for just one or two.

I’m a big advocate of buying local, pasture-raised chickens, the kind that actually live outside (not in a barn with the door open). Not only is raising animals in such a way more humane, it is also more agriculturally sustainable and more delicious to eat. It’s a pleasure to work in the kitchen with chickens that look healthy and that are fresh enough to have no odor. Buying whole chickens is the most economical, and whole chickens almost always include the heart, liver, and gizzards.

If you find yourself with a single chicken or maybe two, you’ll have a single liver or maybe two to cook. You can always freeze them and wait until you have enough to make pate, but if you’d like to cook them right away, here is a recipe for you.

Rigatoni with chicken livers and tomatoes (for one or two people)

I’ve written this recipe in the most casual style, not only because I’ve never written down exact quantities but also to make the point that cooking is improvisational, rarely exact. A little more of this or that, while making a different dish, rarely makes a dish better or worse, just different.

While the pasta water is heating up, sauté a little onion and/or garlic in a little olive oil. When the onion/garlic has taken on a little color and softened (garlic is much quicker than onion), add a chicken liver or two, roughly chopped with a knife or a pair of scissors.

Sauté the liver until it has lost its raw color, and add a little chopped rosemary and/or sage. When the herbs are aromatic, add some high-quality imported canned tomatoes and crush by hand or with a fork. Season with salt and lower the heat to simmer gently for 10 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in abundantly salted water until al dente. Just before the pasta is ready, add a little benediction of olive oil or perhaps a pat of butter along with a little chopped parsley. If the sauce is too dry, add a little water, either plain or the salty, starchy pasta water.

Drain the pasta and toss in the pan for 30 seconds or less. Serve at once.