The Talisman Italian Cookbook

"This is a book my mother had on her shelf. Ada Boni wasn’t as prolific as Elizabeth David but she had a wonderful style of writing. She keeps everything very simple. She writes about the essence of Italian food and communicates that in her recipes. She can make someone who doesn’t cook want to cook her food. Exactly. I totally agree. It’s a combination of science and art. It’s about detail and spontaneity. It’s a balance. You can see that in the books I have chosen. Marcella Hazan is much more detailed in her recipes. She is almost a dictionary of Italian cookery. If you follow her recipes, step by step, ingredient by ingredient, you won’t make a mistake. Elizabeth David is more vague – you take a few tomatoes, put them in a pan with some olive oil and garlic and so on. In central Italy you have quite a lot of meat. You don’t have much fish. You have lentils, beans, pork. Moving south there is more fish, and in the north is much richer food. That’s how I learnt, mostly. By staying with a family, being with them, cooking with them. My cousins also taught me. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter That link is very important. Before I could speak Italian, I would just listen to the way people in a family kitchen would argue about what to do with a recipe."