Cooking the Roman Way

"I wanted to choose a really regional cookbook because I am so interested in regional cooking. This one is about Rome, a city that I love. It’s about what Romans eat and how distinctive it is. The most distinctive thing about Roman food is the meat. Whether it’s a spaghetti carbonara, their love of bacon and pancetta, or the way they do pasta sauces with quite rough cuts of meat. They use spinal cords – all parts of the animal. One of my favourite dishes of all time is something called vignole , which is artichokes, broad beans and peas. It’s very, very Roman. There is also the way they do their roast suckling lamb – it’s the offal, the tripe, strong flavours. The food in Rome is quite tough. There are other great books on Rome but I came across this one recently and started to use it. It’s very good."