Although not a native Roman, he adores – as do I – the
cuisine of his adopted city, whether it is the salty crunch
of a deep-fried artichoke, the bite of spaghetti cacio e pepe
or the vinegary rasp of puntarella dressed with anchovies.
However, Filippo’s life has taken a different turn. He
and his wife have built themselves a house up in the hills
of the Maremma and they drive up there almost every
weekend. We have had to extend our gastronomic
horizons. Although only just in Tuscany, the cuisine is
markedly different and more soft-edged than that of the
city. There is more bread, beans, steak, tomatoes and
prosciutto, and a lot more chicken liver crostini. Luckily,
the Pecorino Toscana passes muster. Yet Filippo and I
have now developed an obsession for a dish I had never
even heard of before, let alone tasted.
The beauty of acquacotta, as my friend sees it, is that it
is always different. One day it will be celery and tomatoes,
the next it will be cabbage and peas. A good cook will
make an acquacotta for every day of the year and never
repeat themselves. The translation of ‘cooked water’ is not
so far from the truth. There can certainly be no addition
of a stock, and only three or four vegetables at most. It
is a very simple dish and therein lies its appeal to me: it is
cooking stripped of artifice, and a careful hand is required
if it is not going to become rather ordinary.
81
March
ACQUACOTTA
As my preamble suggests, this is not so much a definitive
recipe as an example of aquacotta.
Serves four.
Place the celery in a heavy, flameproof casserole dish with
the olive oil and cook gently for 5 minutes before adding
the spring onions. Cook these for 5 minutes in turn before
adding the cabbage. After a further 5 minutes, add the
tomatoes and peas. Season with the sugar, in addition to
salt and freshly ground black pepper. Add enough water
to just cover the vegetables and simmer gently for
10 minutes.
When the vegetables are tender – but still firm, rather
than stewed – poach the eggs by slipping them one by
one into a saucepan of simmering water (laced with a
little vinegar, unless the eggs are freshly laid).
Place the toasts into soup plates and lift the eggs out
onto the toasts. Ladle the stew – it should not be wet
enough to call a soup – around the egg and take to the
table. Serve with grated Parmesan, if liked.
1 celery heart, quartered
lengthways
3 tablespoons olive oil
6 spring onions, trimmed
1 small head of spring
cabbage, cut into thick
ribbons
150g (5½oz) canned chopped
tomatoes
2 handfuls of fresh peas
a generous pinch of golden
caster sugar
4 eggs
vinegar, for cooking the eggs
(optional)
4 thick slices of bread,
toasted
salt and black pepper
grated Parmesan cheese,
to serve (optional)
82
Freezer Geezer
Raw Tuna with Citrus Dressing
The Food Standards Agency has decided to act on the
recommendations of their European overlords and
implement Regulation (EC) No 853/2004, which states
that ‘all fish to be consumed raw or almost raw are to be
subjected to freezing to kill parasites’. On the face of it,
this is rather annoying, mainly because we managed
perfectly well without any such legislation before. Raw
fish and, by extension, raw meat such as steak tartare have
long been a healthy and harmless part of our diet.
Secretly, however, and exceptionally, I am rather
grateful for this ‘nanny knows best’ ruling. At home, I quite
often eat slices of raw mackerel with wasabi and soy sauce.
In my restaurants I have served raw tuna, scallops, salmon,
mackerel, sea bass and goodness knows what else for
decades. I have, of course, always been very careful. I have
always used fish of the most pristine freshness and been
extremely zealous in my habits of hygiene. Such habits
have stood the test of time but they have been
inconvenient. I never used to make any raw fish an à la
carte item as I could never guarantee the supply.
Furthermore, any tuna that I did not sell on the first day
I felt obliged to serve cooked, never – or at least not for
twenty years – my preferred option.
Now I am obliged to freeze my fish. Some restaurants
defy the law and I say good luck to them but I, for once,
have knuckled under. I do so because my Japanese
wholesaler now sells me frozen blocks of yellowfin tuna
that I have found remarkably resistant to any ill effect from
the freezer and which I can defrost in an hour. There are
some fish – cod or sea bass, for example – that I would
not like to freeze, but rich, oily tuna seems completely
unimpaired by the process. If anything, it seems firmer
and ‘cleaner’ and actually benefits from the experience.
I should emphasise that we do not keep our tuna in
the freezer for long, and I would discourage anyone from
thinking a piece of fish can be dragged out of the freezer,
defrosted