Uova con la salsa

Eggs in sauce

This dish tastes like the childhood I never had, somewhere warm and dusty with a vegetable garden that produced more tomatoes than we could manage, chickens that laid fresh eggs, and suppers of eggs coddled in thick tomato sauce. It’s the childhood Vincenzo actually had, for four months of the year at least, when he spent long summers on his grandparents’ farm in southern Sicily, and where there were tomatoes—fields of them—and a man who brought a chicken every Thursday (which his nonna [grandmother] then strangled in the garage), along with two dozen eggs and some breakfast egg biscuits. Vincenzo also likes to remind me that there was a petroleum plant that cast an ugly shadow over the bay of Gela, and coarse threads of menace and corruption woven into the fabric of daily life. Better to talk about tomato sauce (la salsa), which was ubiquitous, mostly on pasta but also on meatballs, and occasionally as a red bed for coddled eggs. In other parts of Italy this dish is known as uova con la purgatorio (eggs in purgatory), but the D’Aleo family called it uova con la salsa (eggs with the sauce), so we do too.

This is my version of eggs in sauce, an absolute favorite in this house for Sunday breakfast or a weekday tea. A little finely chopped parsley over the top is nice, and good bread is essential.

serves 4

1 small white onion

1 celery stalk

5 tablespoons olive oil

salt

about 1 pound fresh or canned plum tomatoes, chopped

a pinch of sugar (optional)

4 large eggs

finely chopped flat-leaf parsley, to sprinkle (optional)

good bread, to serve

Very finely dice the onion and celery. Warm the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium-low heat, add the onion, and cook gently until soft and translucent, then add the celery and a pinch of salt. Stir well so that all the vegetables are well coated with oil. Reduce the heat and cook, stirring every now and then, until the vegetables are soft and lightly golden. This should take about 5 minutes.

If using fresh tomatoes, peel them by plunging them into boiling water for 60 seconds, then transfer them to cold water, by which point the skins should split and slip off easily. Cut the tomatoes into quarters, add them to the pan, and gently mash them with the back of a wooden spoon. Increase the heat so the sauce comes to a gentle boil, then reduce the heat and simmer very gently, uncovered, for 20 minutes, or until it is dense but still saucy, and dark red. Taste and season with salt or sugar if your tomatoes are sharp.

Now you have two options. The first is to keep the pan over low heat, make four wells in the sauce as best you can, and break the eggs into the wells. Cover the pan and allow the eggs to cook gently for 9 minutes. Once cooked, serve them directly from the pan with a spatula and spoon. Alternatively, divide the sauce among 4 warmed individual ovenproof dishes, make a well in the sauce, break an egg into each one, then bake in a preheated oven at 350°F for 4–6 minutes, or until the eggs have set. If you like, sprinkle with parsley to serve.

The Vegetable Book

My earliest cookbook memory is of my mum’s much-loved copy of Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book; I remember looking intently at the cat curled up on a chair next to a basket of cabbages on the front cover, amazed and appalled that it was the only picture in the whole dog-eared book. Years later, when I was at drama school training not to be an actor, I bought my own copy from the Waterstones on Camden High Street. If the notes in the margin are to be believed, the first thing I made was ratatouille, a recipe I had already absorbed as if by kitchen osmosis from my mum. She in turn had learned it from Jane Grigson, so having my copy open on the counter felt fitting. Over the next ten years I would make a lot of ratatouille, smoke a lot of cigarettes, and drink a lot of oaky Chardonnay—often while making ratatouille. It was also during this time that I bought cookbooks earnestly, falling particularly for Simon Hopkinson’s Roast Chicken and Other Stories, Elizabeth David’s essays, Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries, Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat, and Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food, and the way they wove together words, wit, stories, and recipes gave me complete escapism and quiet domesticity, and made me want to cook. I read and used all five books attentively, but the Vegetable Book remained my favorite, the one I read like a novel and turned to for advice or reassurance when I made roast potatoes, roast peppers, tomato sauce, cauliflower cheese, chili con carne, and hummus (I made nearly as much bloody hummus as I did ratatouille). More marginal notes remind me that on my thirty-first birthday I made Grigson’s fennel baked with Parmesan cheese and tomato tart, neither of which were appreciated by my then boyfriend, since we were busy arguing our way to the end of the relationship. Not long after my thirty-second birthday, the Vegetable Book was packed, along with the rest of my cookbooks, books, and belongings, in boxes and stored in my parents’ garage when I left England for Italy.

I arrived with nothing but the clothes I stood up in and a shoulder bag large enough for my purse, diary, phone, a guidebook, and a floral toiletry bag for my specs, lens case, and travel toothbrush. So liberating was this fact that I managed to buy little else for the month and a half I traveled: some underwear, another T-shirt, a hairbrush, and a tube of face cream that split when I fell over on my way up Mount Etna. Even when I decided to stay in Rome for a while, I resisted buying anything that wouldn’t fit in a smallish rucksack. This continued when I rented a studio flat in Testaccio, which was very modestly furnished. It never felt like a liberating, minimalist exercise, it was just rather nice not to be surrounded by stuff. This was particularly nice in the kitchen corner, and suited my cooking life at the time—that of relearning. I bought the bare minimum of equipment: a pasta pan, a frying pan, and a decent knife. At times I’ve told myself (and others) that the meals made in those first two years were some of the best I’ve ever cooked. They weren’t. They were good, though, and an important part of making sense of where I was, thoughts about which I’d write down, a bit too earnestly, in notebooks, wondering if one day I might write a book.

It was when I really began writing about food that I realized I missed something I’d left behind: other people’s writing about food. Although inspiration came from where I was living, the inspiration about how to write about food came from the books I had read and used years before, the distinctive voices I’d so enjoyed reading and cooking with. This coincided with a trip back to the UK, during which I opened the damp boxes in my parents’ garage and pulled out my favorites. It took me a while to find the most important one, the Vegetable Book, which still fell open at the words “Ratatouille, properly made without wateriness, is an adaptable and excellent dish.”

I managed to saunter past the eagle-eyed check-in agent with an extremely overweight bag, only to be caught out by a helpful hostess who came to my assistance as I tried to heave a bag containing nine books into the overhead locker. She gave me a knowing look and heaved the bag up with me. I got back to Rome and lined up the books from England on a shelf in Rome, which felt like two halves of the same thing coming together. The shelf sagged in the middle. That night I went to bed with Simon Hopkinson, and the night after that with Jane Grigson. I remember the first time I made ratatouille in Rome; it caught on the bottom of the pan.

New books have joined my pile of favorites, notably Oretta Zanini de Vita’s books about Roman food and pasta, a heavyweight volume called The Regional Recipes of Italy, Fergus Henderson’s Nose to Tail, everything by the marvelous Laurie Colwin, and David Tanis’s A Platter of Figs. However, the favorite books, the ones I brought with me from London, are still the ones I find myself turning to again and again for inspiration and information, and none more so than the brilliant Vegetable Book, in which history, wit, advice, recipes, good sense, and good taste are woven together into a fat volume with no pictures.

Asparagi in tre modi

Asparagus in three ways

By the time I arrived in Rome in 2005, the Campo de’ Fiori market was already limping, and these days the few stalls merely hint at the vigorous market it used to be. That said, it is still unquestionably worth a visit, the earlier the better, when the light is still limpid and the market is coming to life, since its location is simply extraordinary: it’s in the middle of some of Rome’s most appealing streets, which turn doglegs around small piazzas and Renaissance palazzos that fade and flake around hidden courtyards.

I cycle up there once every couple of weeks, first to buy pizza bianca from Antico Forno, then to visit the flower stall, a neat reminder that Campo de’ Fiori means “field of flowers,” a pretty name for a place that was once the site of executions. In fact, I’ve been known to eat my pizza on the steps of the dark, cowled statue of Giordano Bruno (executed for holding the heterodox belief that the planets moved around the sun) in the middle of the piazza. Then, before the sun is too high, I visit one of the (expensive) stalls that continues the spirit of the market as it once was: that of Claudio Zampa, to buy quince and porcini mushrooms in autumn and asparagus in spring.

I am nearly as fond of asparagus as I am of fresh peas, and I have absolutely no problem with its pertinent aftereffects. I also like the fact that English and Italian asparagus can both be exquisite, a celebration of good ingredients in common rather than a battle of better. This much I know: asparagus must be very fresh, so look for stalks that are firm, bright, unblemished, and with tightly closed tips that appear to be pointing rather than nodding off. Intriguingly, asparagus continues to grow once it is picked, fulfilling its natural inclination to go to seed. As it continues to grow, the sweetness turns to woodiness and the tips open up in nature’s warning not to buy it.

I have never owned a special asparagus pan, although I used to improvise one with a wire basket and a tea-towel turban on top of the pan until I steamed-burned myself. These days I simply lay the asparagus flat in well-salted water and boil it gently until it is tender but not floppy. I like asparagus served three ways: with olive oil and flakes of Parmesan, with melted butter, and, as Jane Grigson suggests, with boiled new potatoes. Asparagus is opinionated and needs wine to match. Aromatic whites from northern Italy, such as Müller-Thurgau, work particularly well.

serves 2

about 1 pound fresh green asparagus

salt

either 5 tablespoons olive oil, a spritz of lemon juice, and 1 ounce Parmesan

or 5½ tablespoons butter

or about 1 pound new potatoes, 2 eggs, a little melted butter, and good bread

Examine the asparagus stalks to see where the skin is inedibly thick. Break off the thick ends of the spears and discard them. Alternatively, pare the thick ends away with a vegetable peeler. If the stalks are very thick I pare away the skin of the whole spear, but this is controversial among asparagus aficionados.

Fill a large pan that will accommodate the asparagus lying down with water, bring it to a boil, and salt it generously. When you are ready to eat, put the spears in the boiling water and let them simmer briskly for 3–7 minutes, depending on their thickness. Lift them out when they are tender but al dente and still bright green, and let them drain on paper towels for a minute. They will continue cooking while you choose your serving method.

One: serve the asparagus with the olive oil and lemon juice and shavings of Parmesan, which has a harmoniously sulfurous nature.

Two: melt the butter until it foams gently at the edges, pour it into a small bowl, and serve it alongside the asparagus spears, encouraging everyone to dip the spears in the melted butter.

Three: boil a few small new potatoes with the asparagus and serve with mollet boiled eggs (which means that the whites are solid enough to peel but the yolk is soft enough to yield), melted butter, and fresh bread.