Made in Italy

"It is true that man does not live on bread alone;
he must eat something with it"

Pellegrino Artusi

I just picked up a copy of Made in Italy by Giorgio Locatelli. The quote is taken from the antipasti section. And it gives an authentic taste of Locatelli's take on food, and on life.

The main bulk of the book is a collection of stories, techniques, anecdotes and culinary thoughts, which are interspersed with recipes.

The formal recipe writing and instruction is clear, well thought out, and detailed. And the techniques he covers, for making bread, pesto, fresh pasta, are clear and detailed. The pasta description is the best I've yet read, on how to use a machine to press perfect pasta.

His perfectionist nature comes across quite well.

He pays the same attention to detail in his instructions that he expects a good chef to pay in their recipes. And the instructions have the feeling of being born of use and experience. Its restaurant quality food made perfectly accessible to the home cook, with the added twist of excellence that can only come from a Michelin starred chef. I have had more revelatory moments, in this book alone, about Italian dishes, both the classics, and the effortlessly perfect re-interpretations Locatelli provides.

The description about how he makes what must be the most perfect pesto outside Liguria is frankly stunning.

It is, for me, so far, the book of Italian cuisine. More informative about basic techique than the Silver Spoon. More broadly ranging than any of Carluccios books.

The bulk of the book, though, is anecdote. Around which recipes, techniques, and the almost inbuilt understanding of food in Italian life, are wrapped. About his grandmothers kitchen, and garden, about the family restaurant, about his families home garden, his travels and experiences in France and London, all tinged with a genuine and inherited love for his topic. The stories are wrapped around food, around recipes, around tastes and experiences. The ingredients punctuate the books stories. The ingredients are the very stuff of the book. They are the rhythm of the story, and the thing to which all Locatellis stories, recipes, tastes and feelings return.

Locatelli writes in such an unassuming fashion. The brash ego of some food writers is largely absent. Instead, he writes with genuine affection and gratitude about the people, the food, the

ingredients, and the experiences that seem to have all fed into the sense of conviviality with which he infuses his food, his writing, his chefs and his restaurant.

For 30 euros, it's a snip. Any lover of Italian food simply must have it.

The Cook and The Gardener

Most of the rest of the Patricks day dinner comes from a book I bought recently - The Cook and The Gardener by Amanda Hesser (the link opens up a sample section from the book, with the
Creamy Leeks recipe).

The shallots (see right) - roasted for several hours in olive oil, rosemary and thyme, and finished off with some balsamic vinegar and garlic, the confit, and the salads - all come from the book.

The confit - red wine, onions, thyme and sugar - was a little too sweet, a little lacking in depth for my taste. I should have salted it more, and used more thyme, and less sugar, perhaps even none. Tricky stuff thyme.

I can unequivocally recommend the book to anyone interested in food, cooking or produce gardening. It's arranged by month, spanning a year from March to February, and the recipes are arranged seasonally. Hesser spends a year cooking almost exclusively from the garden attached to the chateau she is working in, and the recipes have the edge of functionality and creative necessity of a working chef.

At the beginning of each month is an introduction - to whats good this month, to why, to how and for how long. The recipes are interspersed with anecdotes from Hesser's sometimes fraught, or distant, or increasingly amicable relationship with the staunchly Burgundian Monsiuer Milbert, and as Hesser gradually becomes included in the secret life of the garden and Monsieur Milbert, so the book opens up and delivers of itself.

Hesser's knowledge of the garden becomes more profound, as Milbert begins to gruffly impart his entirely practical and seasoned expertise to her, of how and when to harvest food, of why the strength of herbs change, and how to recognise that, of how to judge the freshest, best food. Her descriptions, forged under the gruff tutelage of this septuagenarian cerberus of the walled garden, of what to look for in fresh fruit and vegetables are worth the asking price for any amateur chef. This movement becomes reflected in how she talks about the food, how she cooks, how she plans. The food is drenched in Southern French sun, in necessity, in brief, passing harvests, in the character of Monsieur Milbert.

Its a book made with love by someone honestly sharing their sense of initiation and surprise with the reader. And it is a book about a vanishing life, shared gratefully with the reader.

And Hesser can cook. The recipes are superb.