If you can’t find any of these locally, refer to the Resources section for mail-order sources.
anchovies. The fattest, most flavorful, whole anchovies are usually salt-packed in huge tins. If you buy them, you’ll need to repackage the contents after opening, and you’ll need to clean and rinse the whole anchovies before using them. If you love the flavor they contribute to food, you’ll probably find this well worth doing. If you’re not sure about anchovies, do try the good Spanish ones packed in glass jars—they are much more flavorful than those in tins. Tins, however, are very convenient, in that you can find them at almost any supermarket. If that’s what’s available to you, don’t hesitate to try them; they’ll add a subtle flavor to your dishes.
capers. I prefer capers packed in salt, and I buy a huge jar of them annually and use them, rinsed, as needed. (You can get these big containers of salt-packed capers from Tienda.) You can also get the most intensely flavored capers from Pantelleria (an island near Sicily) from Esperya, a real treat. They offer them both packed in salt and packed in olive oil. If you prefer to buy your capers at a grocery store, you’re more likely to find them packed in brine, a less flavorful method. Specialty food stores stock capers packed in salt as well as brined, and may offer the salt-packed version in smaller containers.
coarse sea salt. Great salt is an affordable luxury! Let me encourage you to be extravagant in your salt purchases: Even if you buy the best salt in the world, you won’t spend a great deal of money. I love coarse regional sea salts; my two favorites are Maldon, from the south coast of England, and Guerande, from Brittany, in northwestern France. Maldon is white and has thin pyramid-shaped crystal shards that melt on the tongue; Guerande sea salt is gray and has larger crystals. Both have a pleasing crunch and an essential minerality. One of the things I like most about the salt from Guerande is that it contains a tiny amount of seawater. This means that when you scatter this salt on a hot cast-iron pan (as you do when pan- broiling meat), it actually crackles and pops! Both of these natural salts taste wonderful with olive oil and with the foods cooked in it. Fleur de sel, another extraordinary sea salt from Brittany, is the most precious salt of all.
OLIVE OIL CUISINE
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It’s made like “the flowering of the oil” olive oil—that is, it’s extracted from the ponds used to harvest Guerande salt by skimming off the finest salt crystals that come to the top. It’s a wonderful condiment (yes, you can taste the difference), but it’s too precious to cook with.
dried pasta. There are lots of good brands of dried pasta on the market. Among my favorites are Latini, which is slow-dried and still made with brass dies that date from the Renaissance, and which offers an irregular surface to catch sauce in (available from Esperya, as are other slow-dried artisanal brands, including Rustichella and Pasta Morelli). Bionaturae, an organic pasta company, produces unusual shapes and a wonderful whole wheat pasta called Gobbetti (found at health-food stores). DeCecco is widely available in grocery stores here in the United States, as is Luigi Vitelli’s organic pasta. Everywhere I went in Italy, whenever I got a look into a kitchen, I saw Barilla pasta, which is also widely and inexpensively available in supermarkets here. When shopping, I look for pasta that’s made in Italy. I prefer artisanal pasta when I can find it, and I buy organic when I can.
flour. Nearly all the baked goods in this book were made with King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour, available in many supermarkets and by mail from www.kingarthur.com.
fresh nuts. It’s appallingly easy to buy rancid nuts, and the off-flavor comes through in your cooking. Buy nuts from merchants who sell a lot of them, so there’s a good turnover, and when you find a merchant who keeps nuts in the cooler, patronize his store. I recently was given some cashews that were just brought back from India, and their freshness was a revelation—I’ve never tasted cashews that good. To preserve them at their best, I store nuts in the freezer.
garlic. I buy local organically grown garlic whenever I can. Look for fat, healthy heads; if you find a little green sprout when you slice open a clove, pick it out and discard it, since it will be bitter. I use the side of a chef’s knife to smash the garlic flat before chopping it.
good bread. In my view, good bread is made from slow-risen dough, and if it has been made of a wet dough (like ciabatta), it often has big irregular holes and a little shimmer of shininess in the strands when
you look closely at a slice in good light. It is usually available whole rather than sliced; it’s frequently in a shape made by the hand rather than a pan—big boules, or^ rounds, flat ovals (ciabatta), long baguettes or batons, or fat ovals dusted with flour. It’s always made by a baker or other individual rather than on an assembly line in a factory, and it’s made from dough that was mixed on the premises, not brought in by truck from a central commissary. There is an artisanal bread revolution happening in this country, and I believe there are good bakers in every major city and not a few smaller ones. If there’s no good bread in your area, bring back bags full to freeze whenever you travel, or learn to make your own. There are a couple of very good bread cookbooks on the market; look for one that talks about “retarding the dough,” making a levain or biga (starter), and using a baking stone for hearth breads. Good bread is a delight with good olive oil; it’s valuable even when old and stale, for bread crumbs and croutons and for layering under soups. If there is no good bread baker near you, you can order bread from Zingermans.
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E5 | ATE |