Buch lesen: «Frankie Dettori’s Italian Family Cookbook»

DEDICATION

For Catherine, Leo, Ella, Mia, Tallulah and Rocco with all my love.

And for Marco, for helping me to realize my lifelong ambition to be part of the restaurant business. What a partner to have!

Special thanks to Alex Antonioni for all her help picking our brains, and for having the courage to write down closely guarded family recipes. We’d never have got them onto paper without you!

We also couldn’t have done without the help of Calum Watson whose patience and resilience is legendary. Thank you, to you, J.C. and the rest of the staff at Frankie’s, for making the photo shoots possible.

Thanks also to Efisio Lenti, Head Chef at Ziu Angelini, Porto Pino, Sardinia. Your ravioli is legendary!

Finally, many thanks to Peter Burrell, our long-term agent, business partner and friend. It’s been a great ride so far, hasn’t it?

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION

ANTIPASTI

Starters

INSALATE

Salads

PASTA E RISO

Pasta and Rice

CARNE

Meat

PESCE

Fish

PIZZA E PANE

Pizza and bread

CONTORNI

Side dishes

DOLCI

Desserts

GELATI

Ice Creams

INDEX

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

INTRODUCTION

Frankie

“In Italy, probably more than anywhere else in the world, people live to eat rather than eat to live. All Italians, every single one of them, are passionate about food. In English, if someone is really into food they get called a ‘foodie’, but in Italian there simply isn’t a definitive word for this term. It would never occur to anyone to categorize someone as a foodie – it’s a given.

With this kind of attitude you’d think that Italy would be the obesity capital of the world. Yet in spite of being obsessed with food Italians are actually very fussy about what they put in their mouths. Italians simply don’t eat processed foods laden with fat, sugar and salt. Instead, ‘la vera cucina italiana’ is based upon local seasonal produce flavoured with fresh herbs and olive oil. Italians love their food but what they eat isn’t unhealthy.

My earliest memories of food and cooking are by most standards fairly sophisticated. My mother’s cooking, whilst simple in technique and not given to fussy sauces, was to say the least eclectic. This is because what she cooked on any given day depended on what fresh produce she found at her local market in Milan. This diversity was compounded by the three blissful months we spent in Sardinia with my grandparents every summer. Every day my Nonna would prepare a wonderful array of fresh local produce. This could be anything from line-caught eels and suckling pigs to homemade cheeses and wild boar. All the vegetables she served were fresh out of the ground from her ‘orto’ (vegetable patch). There were tomatoes the size of a fist that tasted of tomato in a way that I’ve never tasted since, figs so ripe they dripped with syrup, huge succulent peaches and the sweetest grapes I’ve ever tasted. Best of all, my grandparents produced thirty litres of olive oil every year from their own trees. I can still remember the excitement of helping to pick the olives as a young boy. That, my friend, is living.