One of the first things I learned to cook was an apple sponge cake. My great-grandma taught me how to do it after I set her on fire, when I was five and she was eighty-seven. I’ll tell you the fire story later in this book. I have a lot of stories—some funny and some that still make me cry today. Some will inspire you. Some will make people say, “I will never have kids.” But first, one other story about the apple cake: I once baked it for the Pope.
I had a lot of health problems as a kid. So when I was seven years old, my grandfather decided it would be a good idea to take me to Rome and get me blessed. I refused to leave the house without making not just one but two of these apple cakes, which my family called Fabio’s Cake, for the Pope. We arrived in the waiting room at the Vatican two hours ahead of time, and in those two hours, I got so bored I ate one whole cake by myself. The other thing I did to pass the time was yell a lot, very loudly. Seeing that I was causing trouble, various Cardinals came over to say hello and try to calm me down. When they bent down to talk to me, I tried to knock off their hats. My mom was not so happy about either the yelling or the hats.
By the time the blessing mass finally started, I was out of patience, and as soon as I saw the Pope I started to scream as loud as I could, “I have a cake for you!” Seeing all the chaos, the Pope came over to me and for ten whole minutes—longer than my family had ever seen before—I behaved. I gave him the cake, he gave me a hug and a blessing, and then, to thank him, I jumped up and yelled “Tu hai un bel cappello!” which basically means “Nice hat, dude!” Then I tried to whack off his tall ceremonial hat. Somehow he managed to hold it on with one hand while holding my cake in the other, and my parents got me out of there fast.
What can I say? That’s the kind of kid I was. I come from a passionate family—after all, we’re Italian. And a big part of being a passionate Italian is being passionate about food. It doesn’t matter where you’re from in Italy. It doesn’t matter if you’re a lawyer or a janitor: Food is your passion! My family has some very hardworking people, and my family has some lazy people, but all of them are crazy about food. The funny part is that they’re passionate about something that we never really had. We were very poor and we didn’t always have enough to eat, but it didn’t matter: Even just a piece of bread on the family table was a gigantic celebration.
Just because we didn’t have much didn’t mean we had no tradition. I learned at a very young age that where food is concerned, things have to be done in a certain way. For example, in my family, roasted chicken is made with rosemary, sage, and garlic. If you have a chicken and you have sage and you have garlic but there is no rosemary around, then you can’t do a roasted chicken! You have to do something else and everybody knows it. It’s tradition, and people get very animated about it.
So for me, this isn’t just a cookbook. I mean, it is a cookbook, otherwise you’ll say, “Fabio, you’re crazy! It’s a cookbook!” But it’s also twenty-six years of things that happened in my house that mostly revolved around food. It’s a celebration of the biggest part of my life so far—my family. If you want to get a really great meal in Italy, you have to go to somebody’s house. Once you’re there, you’re going to experience amazing food made with simple ingredients. So one of the things I emphasize in this book is getting back to basics and enjoying little things—the small pleasures. It’s incredible what you can do with an apple or an egg, for example, and tomato sauce is just tomatoes, olive oil, and garlic. That’s it. There is no bacon. There is no onion. It’s three ingredients that match perfectly, old world and old school.
This is how I cook in my own home, for comfort through the day and so that everybody who comes there feels welcome. I make the dishes in this book, respecting Italian tradition, and I try very hard not to get too caught up in new kitchen technology.
That’s also why you’ll be able to cook 100 percent of the recipes in this book in your own kitchen. Actually, there are two reasons: First, because I say so; and second, because my food is not pretentious. My food is not complicated. My food is meant to be made and eaten. That’s it. It’s not meant to impress, it’s meant to feed people. I’m not putting this book in front of you because I want you to become a three-star chef. I just want to make sure that when you’re done cooking, every person you know will say, “That’s a great freaking dish. Delicious! I wish I knew how to do it.”
Having said that, please understand that this is not a book of Five-Minute Fixes by Fabio. Some of the dishes take some time, and you’ll want to pour a glass of wine and a take deep breath before you make them. They aren’t hard, but you have to create momentum around these recipes. If something needs to braise for three hours, go on with your life while it’s cooking! Do the laundry, get another glass of wine, chase your dog, plant some tomatoes. It’s not going to cook faster if you look at it. If you want to be lazy, avoid those recipes—you still have about 140 to choose from. But remember: There are people, maybe even people in your family, who enjoy braising something for six hours (and will probably also keep you company while you cook).
I hope you really enjoy these recipes. And as you’re sipping a fantastic soup or deciding to make a risotto or pasta the way my grandmother made it, think about me as a little Italian boy everyone called Fabiolino, eating these same dishes as I struggled and learned and grew up. The way my family cooks is not the only way, of course, but it’s the only way we do it. For me, sharing these memories and recipes is like reconnecting to my family in Italy. I am so happy to bring you together with them around the table.
PS: Common sense always applies in the kitchen. Yes! Developing smart associations will help you a lot more than just following recipes precisely, so try to train your common sense as you cook. If you taste something you’re cooking and you think it is missing salt, but you already added the pinch of salt I safid you need, add another one! I won’t come kidnap your pets in the night!
Another example: I often say pasta should be cooked in salted boiling water. What I mean by salted boiling water is about a gallon of water and a handful of salt. Now, I would like to make a speech about a handful: If you have a hand that is big like a sumo wrestler’s head, then maybe you need only half a handful of salt. But if you have the hand of a three-year-old baby, then you probably need two handfuls of salt. See what I mean? (For the record, a handful of salt is usually about two to three tablespoons.)
And caramelization: When chefs say to cook something “until caramelized, about 15 minutes,” they’re thinking about their stove, their fire, their pots and pans. At your house, you need to cook it until it looks caramelized. That’s why you’re much better off understanding what “caramelized” means rather than walking away for fifteen minutes and coming back to disaster. Caramelized is when you can see color. Vegetables release water, and you’ll see that, too, in the form of a very light steam all over the veggies. Then they’ll start to look translucent. Caramelized is the next step after that. All the moisture has disappeared, the vegetables will start to brown lightly on the edges, and the bottom of the pan has little brown bits here and there. In order to caramelize, vegetables have to touch the pan and the oil, so when you use a wider sauté pan, caramelizing takes less time than when you use a taller pot with a smaller-diameter bottom. I don’t know how long it’s going to take in your pan, because I don’t know what pan you have! Welcome to common sense.
