Italian Food

 

Pizza, wood fire

 

This is the wonderful introduction to Floyd on Italy, which I am thoroughly enjoying:

What is Italian food? Spaghetti Bolognese, lasagne with coleslaw and deep-pan pizzas filled with assorted culinary garbage? No. A thousand times no. On the subject of pizzas, by the by, in Britain at least they have gone the way of the once noble quiche, which before it got ‘wine-barred’ and abused was an exquisite dish, until, as the late Elizabeth David lamented, it became a culinary dustbin. Whereas thinly rolled dough spread with chopped tomato and topped with anchovies and cheese and zapped into a wood-fired oven is heaven – you just don’t need prawns and artichoke hearts, mushroom and chicken tikka pieces in a pastry shell and even if you do you can’t call it a pizza.

And do you know, I travelled the length and breadth of Italy without seeing a spaghetti Bolognese on any restsaurant menu and definitely not in Bologna? And minestrone soup is not tomato soup with peas and spaghetti hoops.

Let me try and tell you what Italian food really is.

You walk into a restaurant. You sit at a table and ask for a menu. There is no menu, but wine and water are presented at once.

The waiter explains the food available in rapid speak. In Italian. You don’t understand. ‘Please may I see a menu,’ so that with my Penguin dictionary I can work it out. It’s hard enough to say ‘please may I see a menu?’ You tried but he’s gone. To a table of happily munching folk who want more. More of what? Leave your table. Walk to theirs, and look.

Oh, wow.

A basket of fresh broad beans in their shells ripped open and dipped into salt and crunched. Fine thin slivers of (Parma) ham cut from the bone, toasted slices of ciabatta (slipper loaf) drenched in olive oil and rubbed with garlic, a mountain of vibrant red radishes, big green nutty olives as sweet as young hazelnuts. And big glasses of red wine. Then a groaning board of squid and clams and prawns and mussels and octopus, lightly cooked and served cold soused in olive oil and lime or lemon juice (not a drop of baslamic vinegar in sight – it is mainly used in London ‘Italian’ restaurants, no names, no pack drill – the foodies* will know what I mean).

Then a steaming bowl of yellow egg-yolked soft tagliatelle with melted butter, crisp slivers of aged Parmigiano and grated lemon zest. You suck it into your mouth. You smile. You drink. You talk. You laugh. You eat.

They clear the plates, but not the glasses, and bring more wine. They bring lightly grilled lamb chops with oregano and a wedge of lemon.

You almost eat the bones too.

Then a plate of grilled peppers and aubergines. Followed by a soft, succulent wedge of Gorgonzola.

And then you can choose an iceberg of ice creams. With a glass of strega and a tiny cup of strong black coffee.

This is Italian food.

I hope this book will help you to enjoy what I loved.

Keith Floyd

Tuckenhay, Devon

27 April 1994.

*In his third and final autobiography, Floyd says he cannot stand the term ‘foodie’. Perhaps a view he developed later on.

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