This punchy chopped salad of soaked and torn stale bread, onions and tomatoes dressed in olive oil and vinegar has many variations – but how will you make yours?
“There is too much ambiguity in that terrible adjective, ‘true’, that would brand as false any variation, any inventiveness and departure from the rule.” This quote from the Italian food historian Massimo Montanari is one I come back to again and again. This summer especially, while finishing my next book (about pasta), a process that has been hard and delicious, fascinating, frustrating and ridiculous. Also driven – haunted – by a sense of responsibility towards a food that contains a philosophy of a civilisation; only not my civilisation, but one I share in.
This sense has been strongest when writing recipes. And this is how it should be. I have been writing about classic Italian recipes, some of which have histories that have filled books, that people have gone to battle over, and that are for many sacred. I want to do them justice. I am also a home cook with my own cooking mind and opinions, and I know the anarchy of ingredients and life. The result is that, every few days, I have gone into a semi-paralysis, believing that every time I was untrue to a recipe, even if it was unintentional, an Italian died. Fortunately, I have a surefire way to cure recipe-writing paralysis: I go into the kitchen and make the recipe. Because, standing there chopping carrots, you remember that the minute you start cooking a recipe, it becomes yours, regardless of whether it’s a two-ingredient sauce or three-day ragù, or if you are following vague advice or someone else’s words to the letter.
Continue reading...from Lifestyle | The Guardian https://ift.tt/32aBDHr