Spinach with pine nuts and raisins
Flat green beans with tomatoes and onions
Roast potatoes with rosemary, garlic, and lemon
Braised lettuce with scallions
Puntarelle with anchovy and lemon dressing
Cauliflower with hard-boiled egg, black olives, and anchovy-lemon dressing
In Rome, as in the rest of Italy, the structure of a meal is important, and vegetables are mostly treated as a separate course. They often follow a first course of pasta or soup instead of meat or fish, or serve as a starter before a heavier main course. Either way, they are usually called contorni, which is generally translated as “side dishes.” That said, served in larger portions and with appropriate additions, such as bread, eggs, or cheese, all the dishes in this section can be meals by themselves.
Can be, and are meals by themselves in this house, mostly at supper time. They include some of our favorites: a red pepper and tomato stew called peperonata, topped with a lacy-edged fried egg; vignarola (spring vegetable stew) piled on toast; greens cooked in garlic-scented olive oil, served with several slices of halloumi grilled until almost the wrong side of golden; a dish of lentils finished with a poached egg. They can mostly be made in advance, and keep well (some would say beautifully and beneficially, as a wait improves the flavor). This makes them useful dishes for the mother of a toddler who turns from delightful to hungry and fractious in the blink of a dinosaur eye any time between five and seven o’clock, and needs a spoonful of whatever with an egg on top right now—his mother too.
First, a small proviso: in a chapter about vegetables I am, of course, going to talk about the market, which was—and still is—one of the reasons I live so happily in Testaccio. It still surprises me every day with its produce and ordinary charm. What if you don’t live near a charming market in Italy, though, where cranberry beans in their pods and zucchini showing off their golden flowers roll into your arms? The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t matter: you want the very best you can find, and what you can find will do. These recipes bring out the best in vegetables, and will fit around you and what you have. Now, to market.
Every quarter of Rome has a market, some large and some small, most of them open six mornings a week. Testaccio is home to one of Rome’s most famous, or infamous—I’m not quite sure which. During my first seven years here, it inhabited Testaccio’s central piazza, right next to my old building in via Mastro Giorgio. It was built in the 1960s, a covered home for the historic market that had previously simply gathered in the piazza. From a distance, the big square building, roofed but open, was unprepossessing, ugly even, especially in the afternoons when its metal grilles and gates were padlocked down, making it look like a vast fortified bus shelter. Inside, the first thing to strike you was the not-quite-half-light; the grimy glass roof held by iron uprights kept things muted even on the sunniest day. After the light came the smell of flesh, the nature of which depended on whether you had entered next to the meat or fish stalls. Either way, it gave way to the thick, vegetal, and sweet smell of freshly picked produce piled high on the dozen or so central stalls, the low light emphasizing the almost unnaturally brilliant colors.
The image of the old market most etched in my memory is that of late spring, when it was still awash with leafy greens and tangled wild ones, lettuces, pods of peas and broad beans like gnarled fingers, and stalks of asparagus. Green, but splattered with color like a Cy Twombly canvas: the gaudy gold flowers at the tip of every fluted zucchini, the violet tips of the artichoke flowers and pink-tinged spinach stalks, the marbled elegance of the white-and-pink cranberry bean pods, the flush of early peaches and apricots, and the stain of cherries and Sicilian tomatoes. Beside several of the stalls was a chair at which someone sat doggedly shelling peas, peeling tiny onions, trimming artichokes, or divesting leafy greens of their tough stalks with impressive speed and skill. All this was accompanied by the market hum of (mostly) good-natured shouting and banter. Beyond the food stalls were those selling shoes, more shoes, cheap clothes, bags, and household goods, each stall’s wares spilling into the already narrow walkways that were patchworked with pieces of cardboard for balancing on while you tried on shoes. It was an extraordinary place, both makeshift and functional, adhering to none of the EU guidelines for health and safety and making you feel as if you were in another time.
There was so much talk and so many delays (building sites in Rome inevitably become archaeological digs) that it seemed as if market vendors would never move. Then, one day two years ago, they did, to a newly constructed brick and glass structure a few hundred yards across Testaccio, in front of the old slaughterhouse. A few weeks later the men and bulldozers arrived, and before an audience of testaccini, including my old neighbor Marcella shaking her head and muttering dio mio, glass panes shattered and iron uprights twisted as the old market was pulled to the ground.
I was with another neighbor the first time I visited the new market, and the experience was a little like an Alan Bennett play in Italian, Sofia giving a running commentary of ohhs and oh nos, isn’t this lovely and clean and oh dear, I don’t like that. Whereas in the old market you had to adjust your eyes to the almost half-light, in the new market you have to make allowances for the brightness. We walked and watched the residents of Testaccio exploring the new space as if it were some queer new planet, peering at the stallholders they had known all their lives in a completely new light.
It took me ages to find Gianluca and Giancarlo, each aisle seeming rather like the next. Then there they were at stand 32, Frutta & Verdura, il Velletrano, Gianluca with a cigarette in his hand (an EU rule still reassuringly broken). “Eccoci,” (“Here we are”) he said, as if he had been waiting for us, and there was his produce, much of it grown on the family’s land southeast of Rome: the reds and greens, the wild and the tame, the bulbs, roots, and leaves, the same glorious stuff, just in a different frame. “What do you think about the new market?” I asked. “Boh,” he said. “We had to move and now we have to get used to it.” Then he passed me a paper bag to help myself, with a gesture that seemed to say “just get on with it.” As I took the bag, another customer, a much older signora, elbowed me strategically in order to maneuver herself to the front, at which point I used my height advantage to reach up and over, at which point she used her lack of height to grab the fruit from below. Not that we needed to fight over fruit—there was more than enough to go around. I was glad for the tussle, though, because it felt familiar. Gianluca replenished the depleted sections with an avalanche of tomatoes and bunches of basil, the smells of which filled the air. People jostled, voices were raised, free parsley was stuffed in the tops of bags. Everything had changed, yet nothing had changed. My fruit and vegetables in my bag, I went to visit my butcher, Sartor, now occupying a spot as prime as their steak, right in front of an opening at the heart of the market that allows you to look down on the archeological remains of an ancient Roman road. It was clear from Daniele’s eyes that he was pleased with the move and position. “Bello, eh?” he said as he handed me my parcel. Then I went over to see how my fishmonger was settling in. He complained about the higher rents, but then gestured to the running water that meant he no longer needed to ferry buckets of water from the communal pumps, before trying to overcharge me for a couple pounds of clams. Again, nothing had changed. Before leaving, we sat on one of the concrete benches in the wide central opening, which gives you a clear view through Testaccio one way and across to the old slaughterhouse in the other, a pleasing view of a part of the city to which I am so attached.
I would be lying if I said I don’t miss the old market with its roguish charm and sweet, stale breath. That said, I know it had to go and I am now, after two years of daily visits, extremely fond of the new market, which, although still rather too bright, is starting to feel lived in, its Roman market spirit kicking a little against the imposed order. Alongside the stalls I’ve been visiting for years, there are also new ones that breathe even more life into the place: Sergio with his superb sandwiches filled with classic Roman dishes, Artenio with his Lariano bread, Emanuela with her kitchenware, Gabriele Torrefazione (coffee roasters), Costanza and Roberto bringing Sicilian traditions to Rome, much to Vincenzo’s delight.
As I write, the site of the old market is still cordoned off, and work on reopening the piazza is, it appears, as fraught with bureaucratic delays as closing a piazza. We have petitioned the mayor and it appears someone has finally listened. By the time you read this, the fountain of amphorae on the edge of Testaccio will have been brought back to its original home at the center of the old market piazza at the heart of Testaccio, and will be surrounded by majestic trees.