Agnello alla scottadito

Grilled lamb chops

More than 3,000 years ago, the very first Romans were shepherds. Sheep grazed in this part of the city until 150 years ago, despite edicts forbidding them within the ancient city walls. Lamb, mostly very young suckling lamb (abbacchio), is still a Roman favorite, especially at Easter time, when it’s roasted with potatoes, braised with rosemary and garlic, or its cutlets are dipped in bread crumbs and then fried until golden, or grilled scottadito: so hot that they burn (scotta) your finger (dito).

It’s rare to find such young lamb outside Rome, so the following recipe, although inspired by the Roman abbacchio alla scottadito, is appropriate for small lamb chops, the kind I find (and miss) in England. The chops need to marinate in olive oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary for about an hour before being cooked on a very hot grill for a few minutes on each side. If you want to burn your fingers, you need to grab the chops as soon as they come out of the pan, which means having warm plates, people, and filled wineglasses at the ready. In Rome, lamb cooked this way is usually served with nothing more than a wedge of lemon. I also like new potatoes and a big spoonful of the glorious green sauce that is salsa verde.

serves as many as you like

2 small, ¾-inch-thick lamb chops or cutlets per person

salt and freshly ground black pepper

a sprig of rosemary, chopped

extra-virgin olive oil, to marinate

boiled new potatoes and salsa verde (here), to serve

Put the lamb chops in a shallow dish, season with salt and pepper, add the rosemary and a good amount of olive oil, and leave the chops to marinate, turning them from time to time, for 1 hour.

Heat a grill pan or frying pan until it is very hot, then grill the chops, without pressing them down, for 3 minutes on one side, then 3 on the other, by which point they should be burnished on the outside but tender and pink inside. Lift onto a warmed plate and serve immediately.

Braciole di maiale con finocchio e ginepro

Broiled pork chops with fennel and juniper

A plain broiled fat pork chop has long been a favorite in both England and Italy. The pork has to be good: Gloucester Old Spot or Tamworth back in England, or cinta senese in Italy, the black pig with the white stripe that my pork butcher has from time to time. If I’m not broiling them plain I like to marinate the chops in a mixture of fennel and crushed juniper berries, an idea from Elizabeth David’s book Italian Food, which, far from being overpowering, is extremely companionable. The gentle aniseed from the fennel and the spicy woodiness of the juniper are flavors I seem to use more and more these days.

It’s a tidy dish to make, in that you marinate the chops in a shallow ovenproof dish that can be put straight under the broiler and then brought to the table. The chops need nothing more than a green or bitter leaf salad, some fresh bread to mop up the juices and a glass of red wine with good tannins and a spicy nature, such as a Cirò from Calabria.

serves 2

a small bulb of fennel with fronds

1 garlic clove

4 juniper berries

salt and freshly ground black pepper

extra-virgin olive oil, to marinate

2 large pork chops

Chop the fennel and garlic and crush the juniper berries. Put them in a shallow ovenproof dish and season with salt and pepper. Pour over a good amount of olive oil. Put the pork chops in the dish and leave them to marinate for 3 hours, turning them from time to time.

Preheat the broiler to high. Slide the dish under the broiler and broil the chops for about 20 minutes, turning them at least twice. In the absence of a broiler, you can also roast them at 400°F in the oven, turning them twice (you won’t get the same golden color, but they still cook beautifully). Once cooked, bring the dish to the table and serve the chops from it, spooning over some of the juices. Mop up the remaining juices with bread.

Straccetti di manzo con rughetta e Parmigiano

Sautéed beef with arugula and Parmesan

A straccio, which comes from the verb stracciare (to rip), was traditionally a rag cloth made from old clothes or sheets. I have inherited my granny’s and mum’s fetish for rags: old T-shirts for the windows, a silk shirt streaked with Rioja for polishing, threadbare cotton sheets ripped into squares for everything else. Today the word straccio is also used for kitchen cloths, particularly the coarse cotton ones for the kitchen floor. Straccetti are little rags, so to make straccetti di manzo you rip very thin pieces of lean beef into rag-like pieces, rub them with olive oil, and cook them swiftly in a hot pan until they curl and shrink and look even more like old rags, but taste anything but, especially when eaten with arugula and curls of Parmesan cheese.

Pan-fried beef, apart from being beefy, has a salty, umamiish quality, and good Parmesan does too, which makes them a charismatic pair, especially when placed on a grass-green weave of peppery arugula leaves, the juices from the pan providing the dressing. I love the way the arugula begins like a teenager, offering resistance and kick, but then as the warmth of the beef sets in and you muddle everything with your knife and fork, the leaves start cooperating enough to wrap themselves around the rags of beef, catching warm curls of cheese as they go. By the time you reach the last few mouthfuls you’re torn, a bit like when you approach the last pages of a good book: a greedy gallop to the finish, or a rein-in to savor every last bit? The last few leaves should have collapsed into a pile to be scooped up with your fingers. It’s ridiculously delicious food, and fast too, which makes it one of my favorite speedy solo suppers after toast, butter, and anchovies.

serves 2

10½–14 ounces lean steak, such as rump, very thinly sliced with the grain (I ask my butcher to do this, or you can freeze it to help you slice it very thinly)

extra-virgin olive oil, for marinating and cooking

salt and freshly ground black pepper

a bunch of arugula

Parmesan, to serve

lemon wedges, to serve

Tear the steak into smallish pieces (rags) and put them in a bowl. Pour over a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, season with salt and pepper, toss well with your hands, and leave to sit for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, wash and dry the arugula and divide it between 2 plates.

Warm 1 tablespoon olive oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat, add the beef and the oily juices from the bowl, and sauté briskly until it is just colored, but still a little pink in places, which will take a matter of seconds. Divide the meat between the plates, spooning over any juices, then use a vegetable peeler to pare curls of Parmesan over the beef and arugula. Pour over a little more olive oil if you think it needs it, and serve with a wedge of lemon.

Saltimbocca alla romana

Veal rolls with prosciutto and sage

It’s a wonderful thought that something could be so appetizing that it literally jumps from the plate into your mouth. This is the promise of saltimbocca, which literally means “jump” (salt) “in” (im) “the mouth” (bocca), an inspired combination of veal, prosciutto, sage, butter, and wine. Having jumped, the tender veal, salty prosciutto, musty sage leaf, and buttery sauce stop being so energetic and roll around the mouth instead.

The veal must be thin, and the prosciutto just slightly smaller than the veal. You pin the silvery-green sage leaf to the veal and prosciutto with a toothpick in much the same way as you would a brooch, which means that I often think, rather incongruously, of my grandmother, who was never without a brooch on her lapel. Traditionally, the veal would be dusted with flour, which thickens the sauce. I prefer not to dust, but you might like to. It is worth experimenting with both ways. If saltimbocca really is to jump and roll, I think it needs to be eaten almost immediately. The best saltimbocca I’ve made was for two people: four slices pinned, sautéed, and slid onto warmed plates on the table just steps from the stovetop. You need bread to mop up the juices and a glass of something dry, white, and—working on the principle that local food goes with local wine—from this part of Italy, such as a Marino or a Frascati.

The detail in the recipe and the hands in the pictures are Carla’s, a woman from Testaccio whose market-shopping prowess I admired from a distance for years. We met officially at our fruit-and-vegetable stall, when she reprimanded me for asking for radishes out of season. She picked me up again at the butcher when I asked for a particular cut of veal, at which point I asked her how she made saltimbocca. The next day she invited herself into my kitchen to show me. It is her touches, the nicks around the edge of the veal, the split sage leaf, the pan dotted with butter, that make all the difference.

serves 2

4 slices veal, about 2¾ ounces each (they should be quite thin, about ⅛ inch; ask your butcher or pound them yourself)

salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 slices prosciutto

4 sage leaves

butter, for frying

about ½ cup white wine

Working with one slice of veal at a time, make 6 or so little nicks with a knife around the edge; this stops it from curling up as it cooks. Season with salt and pepper, place a slice of prosciutto on top, and attach a sage leaf with a toothpick or cocktail skewer. Carla notes that you can rip the leaf in half and pin two pieces, which distributes the distinctive sage flavor even better.

Dot a frying pan with butter. Once the butter foams, add as many slices of veal, sage-side up, as the pan can accommodate comfortably in a single layer. Fry for 2 minutes on one side, then turn it over and fry for 2 more on the other. Transfer to a warmed plate and fry the remaining slices in the same way, adding a little more butter if necessary.

Add another knob of butter to the pan, and once it has melted, add a little wine. While it bubbles and evaporates, scrape the meat juices into the buttery sauce. Serve each person 2 saltimbocca slices with a little of the buttery sauce.

Salsicce con fagioli

White beans with sage and sausages

This is perhaps my favorite dish for one of my favorite beans: small, creamy-white cannellini. The combination of beans, some whole and some reduced to a puree, scented faintly with bay and more intensely with sage, and good sausages is a particularly good one.

Although you can use ever-helpful and time-saving canned beans, it really is worth soaking and cooking your own beans for this dish. They not only have a better flavor and consistency, but cooking your own also means you can add a couple of bay leaves to the pan, which lend a fragrant and piney note. It also means you have the benefit of the cloudy, starchy bean-cooking water, a little of which, along with the olive oil, gives the beans a creamy texture. It’s important to fry the garlic and sage in plenty of olive oil. The cloves and leaves should sizzle gently in a coat of tiny bubbles until their scent rises fragrantly from the pan. If you come over for dinner there is a very good chance I will serve you this, made with dark cinta senese sausages. If you want to bring wine, a bottle of a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo would be nice.

serves 4

2¾ cups dried cannellini beans, soaked in plenty of cold water for 12 hours

2 bay leaves

salt

8 good sausages

2 garlic cloves

6 tablespoons olive oil

6 sage leaves

freshly ground black pepper

Rinse the soaked beans, tip them into a large, heavy pan, add enough cold water to cover them by at least 3 inches, and add the bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a low simmer and cook until the beans are tender, which should take about 1 hour, but will depend on the age of the beans. Once the beans are cooked, stir in a generous pinch of salt and leave them to cool in their liquid. This can be done the morning or day before.

Grill or pan-fry the sausages. Peel and smash the garlic with the back of a knife. In a large frying pan or sauté pan, warm the olive oil and cook the garlic and sage leaves until fragrant and golden. Use a slotted spoon to ladle the beans from their cooking water into the pan and stir until the beans are warmed through and coated with oil. Transfer about one-third of the beans from the pan to a bowl, add a couple of tablespoons of their cooking water (save the rest for soup), and either mash them by hand or use an immersion blender to reduce them to a smooth paste, then return them to the pan. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Slice each sausage into 3 pieces, arrange 6 slices on a pile of beans, and serve immediately.

The connection

I grew up in Harpenden, a smallish town just north of London, which had six butchers. My mum, like her mum, was particular and demanded good meat with all the right credentials. So we traveled to the farthest one, Harbour Butchers on Southdown Road, of which I have hazy recollections: the sawdust on the floor, the not-unpleasant smell of fat, hooks against white tiles, Mr. Harbour’s striped apron, and the glass cabin across from the counter where Mrs. Harbour sat and collected the money. We were encouraged to peer through the glass counter and our uneasy questions were answered with honesty while we kicked the sawdust. As much attention was given to a rib of beef or rack of lamb as to a cluster of kidneys or a few ounces of liver, and questions and advice were passed across the counter like wrapped packets of meat. Back home, the packets were unwrapped and more questions asked and answered. If Grandma Roddy was around, which she often was, she would remind us how lucky we were.

We didn’t eat meat every day—far from it—but when we did I remember my mum cooking it with care. Lamb chops were trimmed and grilled for tea, a roast on Sunday provided sandwiches or a shepherd’s pie on Monday, a chicken was roasted for supper and its remains were made into soup, and kidneys were fried and served on toast. Of course, among all this were also bad school lunches, bad meat, and bad butchers, as well as rejections and refusals passed contagiously among siblings: “I don’t like tongue,” I announced. “I don’t like tongue either,” said Ben. “I hate tongue,” piped up Rosie. In fact, unlike me, Rosie really did hate tongue—most meat, actually—which is why she became a vegetarian at age 12 and has remained so ever since. But refusals aside, the foundations were laid: good quality, varied meat, but not too much of it, bought from a good butcher and cooked simply.

Perhaps even more vividly than my mum I remember Grandma Roddy, who although not a natural cook was a capable, thoughtful, and resourceful one. She (Phyllis) was a wiz at turning a few ounces of ground meat into tattie hash, at boiling and then pressing a tongue to be sliced warm with new potatoes or cold for sandwiches. I also remember Granny Alice cooking meat with her sister May in the kitchen at the back of her pub in Oldham, while shouting at my uncle Colin to “Put that cigarette out right now!”; a piece of braising steak and fat kidneys made into pies, a rib of beef for Sunday lunch around the pub tables, an oxtail made into soup, beef boiled with carrots until the meat was so tender you could almost cut it with a spoon.