Broiled pork chops with fennel and juniper
Sautéed beef with arugula and Parmesan
Veal rolls with prosciutto and sage
White beans with sage and sausages
Chicken with tomatoes and sweet red peppers
Chicken or rabbit, hunters’ style
Oxtail with tomatoes and celery
Whole fish baked in the oven or grilled
Beef simmered with carrots and celery until it’s so tender you can serve it with a spoon; slow-roasted lamb with roast potatoes; oxtail braised slowly until it falls from the bone; boiled tongue sliced thinly and tucked into sandwiches. I could be talking about the food of my northern English family, but I’m actually talking about some of Rome’s most traditional meat dishes.
At first, living and cooking in Rome was all about the discovery of things that seemed entirely different. I wanted to understand how Romans mix garlic, rosemary, chile, and white wine in the most seductive way that clings to lamb and chicken and rabbit; to discover the key to simmering meatballs and rolls of beef until they are plump in rich, smooth tomato sauce; to learn to fry meat with sage or rosemary until it’s so tantalizing you grab it while it’s too hot. I bought myself two wide pans, like the ones I could see through the window of the trattoria backing onto our courtyard, and I began.
As I stayed longer and tasted more, I realized that amid the different and new there was also something extremely familiar. I saw that Roman lesso is not just similar but almost identical to the boiled beef my auntie May made in the back kitchen of my grandmother’s pub in Oldham; that roast lamb with burnished potatoes here is very like roast lamb there; that boiled tongue is as delicious with salsa verde as it is with a dab of English mustard; that English northerners and Romans alike know that tripe is tripe and can be plain delicious. Cooking meat in Rome wasn’t just about discovery, it was about the rediscovery of the dishes of my childhood, or some of them at least. I was reminded of something I’d once read: that cooks inherit a food tradition, or choose to follow one, or both. My inherited traditions were those of my northern English family; the ones I chose to follow were those of the city I found myself in—Rome. It was in cooking meat that the two seemed to meet, or rather collide, in a small, breeze-ventilated kitchen in Testaccio.
Good Roman cooking, like any good, popular cooking, is homely and rooted in tradition. It is simple and, unlike me, unpretentious. It makes virtue out of necessity and makes things taste as good as they possibly can. These characteristics are particularly apparent when it comes to meat, which is cooked simply and resourcefully, making a little go a long way and letting nothing go to waste. This part of the book is about these discoveries, the not-so-secret revelations of garlic and chile, the tomato sauce and the strategically placed sage leaf. It’s also about the rediscoveries, the dishes I wanted to make because in some way they reminded me of home—after all, food is about making connections—but most of all it is about the way I like to eat.
It’s nine o’clock on a Tuesday morning and I’ve drunk too much coffee. The man in front of me, who must be in his late seventies and reminds me of my uncle Frank, slight and spritely with a cigarette pinched between thumb and index finger, is buying three etti (300 g) of tripe. Roberta folds the pale honeycomb pieces into a clear plastic bag, which she then spins and knots. To my right, a woman I recognize from the pharmacy, and who seems undressed without her white coat, is buying liver and veal for spezzatino. “Everyone is home for dinner,” she notes, “so give me enough for six.” At the other end of the long counter, Mauro is serving a woman sausages and rib tips (Romans call them spuntature), which I imagine will be cooked together for a rich stew. As I wait in front of folds of tripe and dark red swathes of liver, the blows of the cleaver and slow grind of the meat grinder fill out the hiss and clatter of saucers from the bar nearby. Luca balances on the lip at the bottom of the counter. He peers through the glass, his breath leaving a tiny cloud, and whispers, “meat.”
My butcher’s shop, Sartor, began life as a chair in the open market from which Mauro’s grandmother sold chicken and lamb. Eighty-five years later, the stall is one of the most significant in the market. The family have more or less set positions behind the double-fronted glass counter: father Mauro at the far left manages the pork and lamb; Roberta, his wife, handles birds and rabbit; their eldest son, Daniele, who is unmistakably his parents’ son, with his mother’s smile and his father’s slant to the eye, oversees the beef. Enrico is usually at the far end with the veal. He isn’t family but almost is, having worked there since the day when, 26 years ago and at age 14, he refused to go to school, and Roberta appeased his distraught mother by giving him a chance. They are all good butchers and good people. They are skilled, courteous, and have seemingly nothing to hide, so are only too happy to share their knowledge, to explain why and how.
It was Mauro who first served me more than nine years ago when, having just moved into my new flat right next to the old market, I visited the stall for the first time to buy a lamb chop. He sized me up politely but quizzically, anticipating a miscommunication. I confirmed his suspicions by uncertainly repeating the word I had looked up in the dictionary three times: “Costolette. Costolette. Costolette.” On the third attempt he understood. “Solo una?” (“Just one?”), he said, holding up his index finger. “Si,” I said, returning the gesture, which made me feel even more feeble. A woman next to me was engaged in some serious shopping, on the counter before her a mound of neatly wrapped packets. “Solo una,” Mauro repeated, just before his cleaver hit and then flattened the meat against the thick wooden board—thwack. At which point I understood his insistence: the chop, or rather cutlet, was tiny, a mouthful of pink flesh attached by a seam of fat to a slim rib. From where I was standing I imagined that, once cooked, I could eat three, four, five even, given the amount of packing and unpacking I had done that day. But it was too late, I couldn’t remember one useful word. “Si,” I said and Mauro handed me my small parcel. “Mangiano poco, queste donne Americane,” (“they eat little, these American women”) he said, and everybody laughed as if I had proved a point. I wanted to tell them I was English and could eat 10 of his costolette.