For years I worked with Carl, an Italian-American raised in a San Francisco suburb. He wasn’t a professionally trained cook, but having grown up in a traditional multigenerational Italian family, he’d learned a lot from his relatives, most of whom were great cooks. He was always describing the feasts his clan organized, and I always gleaned a cooking tip from him. One day I saw him chopping up basil and garlic with a knife, then stirring in a generous amount of olive oil. H
