Pesce al forno o sulla griglia

Whole fish baked in the oven or grilled

I generally cook fish in the oven, the wax paper packet (cartoccio) puffing up proudly and allowing it to bake and steam at the same time. It emerges so incredibly moist that it makes up for the absence of charred, crisp skin. The paper also makes this an extremely neat supper, as the baking dish remains clean. The package can be opened at the table, the fish lifted onto a clean plate, and the bones wrapped neatly back in the paper and deposited on the drain board until someone volunteers to put them in the trash outside. Minimal washing up all round: an important consideration in this house.

Apart from a barbecue overseen by my brother, Ben, though, my favorite way to cook fish is on the grill, the charred skin and direct heat imparting a distinct smokiness. Our kitchen is small, and the exhaust fan is enthusiastic but ineffective, so I only do it when it’s warm enough to have the doors wide open. It’s important that the fish is dry, which ensures a crisp, charred skin, and also to brush it with olive oil to prevent it from sticking completely (it will stick a little). I cook whole sea bass, red mullet, and sardines in this way, allowing about 14 ounces of fish per person, so one large fish or several small ones in the case of red mullet.

If the fish is really fresh, with bright eyes, red gills, and a smell not of fish but of the sea, it needs no additions or embellishments. That said, if you like you can tuck some parsley and a slice of lemon in the fish before wrapping it for the oven. I almost always serve baked or grilled fish with salsa verde (green sauce, here), a combination that never fails to give me table joy. New potatoes go well too, or braised fennel, a green salad, and a glass or three of Soave from Veneto; with grilled fish, perhaps a white from Etna in Sicily.

serves 2

1 (1¼–1½-pound) sea bass if you are oven baking, or 14 ounces whole fish per person if you are grilling, scaled and cleaned

1 lemon, sliced (optional)

a few sprigs of flat-leaf parsley (optional)

salt and freshly ground black pepper

olive oil, for brushing

To bake the fish, preheat the oven to 375°F. If your fishmonger hasn’t cleaned the fish, do so by cutting it open from the head to the top of the tail, and pulling out and discarding the innards. Scrape away the scales from the fish with the edge of a sharp knife, then rinse it inside and out with cold water and pat it dry. Now—and this is important—leave the fish, ideally in a sunny spot, to dry completely.

Take a piece of wax paper large enough to wrap generously around the fish. Place the fish in the middle of the paper, tuck a couple of slices of lemon and a couple of sprigs of parsley inside it, season with salt and pepper and lift the ends of the paper, bring them together and fold them over to seal and make a loose package. Put the package on a baking sheet, slide it into the oven, and bake for 20 minutes for every 1 pound of fish. Remove and leave to rest for a couple of minutes before opening and serving.

To cook the fish on the grill, preheat the grill pan over medium heat until it smokes gently. Brush the fish with olive oil and season it with salt and pepper. Place it on the hot grill pan and leave it there until it’s time to do the other side. The rule of thumb is that a 1-pound fish takes 8 minutes on each side on the grill pan, so a ½-pound fish will take 4 minutes on each side, and a 1½-pound fish, 10 minutes. Don’t move the fish until it’s time to turn it, and then do so carefully so as not to tear the flesh, or do so as little as possible, at least. If I doubt my own timing I check the fish by making a small nick with a knife near the spine and checking whether the flesh is white, not clear, and firm but still moist. I also taste it.

Cozze in tegame

A pot of mussels

On Friday night there is nothing I like more than a sleeping child, a glass or three of chilled Sauvignon Blanc, a couple pounds of mussels cooked with garlic, parsley, and wine, and a pile of toast to mop up the broth. Mussels are cheap, sustainable, and readily available, and my fishmonger always has a net bag of pearly, jet-black, barnacle-covered, beard-sprouting cozze sitting on the icy counter. They are laborious to clean (I once cleaned 22 pounds and was hallucinating barnacles and beards for the rest of the day), but it’s a task made considerably easier by a glass of wine, which you have to open anyway in order to cook them.

Once cleaned, mussels are a cinch to make: oil and garlic, mussels in, wine too, lid, shake, peek to see if they’re open. You could divide the mussels and broth between two bowls or simply bring the pan to the table, with bread or toast for the broth and another bottle of wine.

serves 2

2¼ pounds mussels

1 shallot or small white onion

2 garlic cloves

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 bay leaf

⅔ cup white wine

flat-leaf parsley, to serve

toasted sourdough, to serve

Soak the mussels in cold water, discard any open or cracked ones, and then scrub the rest clean, scraping off any barnacles and pulling away the beards. Rinse, then cover them with clean cold water for 30 minutes. Drain.

Finely chop the onion and garlic. In a large pan with a lid, heat the olive oil, add the onion, garlic, and bay leaf, and cook gently until soft. Add the mussels and stir, then add the white wine and cover the pan with the lid. Cook for 4–6 minutes (shake the pan from time to time), or until the mussels have opened. Discard any that haven’t. Meanwhile, finely chop some parsley and add it to the pan. Divide the mussels and broth between 2 warm bowls and serve with lots of sourdough toast.

Roman Jewish cooking

In the past, the Tevere river, which curves and cuts through the city, was prone to devastating floods that invaded low-lying parts of the city. When Rome became capital of Italy it underwent a makeover that included enclosing the Tevere within heavy embankments. Protect the city they may, but these stout walls also isolate the river, making it seem solitary and dislocated. This is why the newly minted cycle lanes that run along the river banks and are shaded by the embankments are so welcome—not just as a safe place to pedal and find a satisfying echo with a two-year-old, but as a means of proximity to the river, which for hundreds of years played a fundamental role in city life and was home to boats, mills, fishermen, and 90 varieties of fish. We pedal a few miles along the path at least once a week, more often than not on our way to a part of Rome the river used to devastate periodically: the ghetto.

From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, a struggle between the papacy and the empire resulted in Rome’s Jewish community being forced to live in a walled ghetto between the Portico di Ottavia and the river, which was locked at sundown and reopened at dawn. It was, my neighbor Emilia once told me before sharing her family recipe for carciofi alla giudea, a dark, claustrophobic place, exposed to floods and disease, but also one of fierce, self-sufficient community-mindedness and, even at the worst of times, good food.

The walls were knocked down in the mid-nineteenth century, allowing the light in and those who wished to, to leave. Today the ghetto, which is still home to a tight-knit Jewish community, is one of the most atmospheric and beautiful parts of the city, a rabbit warren of tiny cobbled streets and alleys, some of which conjure up images of Rome that have become clichés: the damp washing strung across the street, the group of men sitting in a circle of mismatched chairs, the teenager mending his motorbike, the woman prepping artichokes. Picturesque, yes, but never cloyingly so, even in the most touristic trattorias (of which there are many), which has much to do with the history that permeates every cobble. The faded palazzi that rise up may indeed be beautiful, but it doesn’t take much of a leap to imagine how isolated and insalubrious they must have been, how damp and starved of light. Evocative, too, is the knowledge that it was in the dark, ill-equipped kitchens of ordinary families that Roman Jewish cuisine developed, a true cucina povera, poor food in the sense that it used ingredients available to the poor or those spurned by the wealthy, such as squash blossoms, offal, small fish, or bitter greens, which were transformed into richly flavored dishes.

Since true Jewish food is kosher, and therefore prepared according to principles laid down in the Bible, Roman Jewish food is perhaps the vein of Roman cooking that has remained truest to its gastronomic origins. “This food,” Emilia tells me, “is only found in people’s homes.” However, places like Nonna Betta and C’è Pasta e Pasta in Trastevere still serve traditional and largely kosher dishes that are still made the way they always have been. They are some of my favorites: deep-fried artichokes and squash blossoms; battered salt cod; baked anchovies with indivia (bitter greens); salt cod with tomato, raisins, and pine nuts; a very particular take on a cherry and ricotta tart; and soft almond cookies.