The Basic Ingredients

This Book is About Italian Cookery of the most rustic and uncomplicated sort. The recipes are for the most part classic and traditional family favourites with more than a hint of nostalgia. Italian cooking has its origins firmly embedded in Italy’s history of poverty and peasant farming, and these are the dishes that rose directly out of such circumstances.

As a matter of course, I have adapted these very old recipes for use on modern cookers. Not many of us have the facilities that the originators of the dishes would have had, for example, the embers of a real wood fire, in which to leave the casserole on a slow cook for almost a night or a day. Although these dishes are born of the simplest life imaginable, it is a simplicity rich in the best that nature has to offer. If you observe the rules, and use the freshest herbs, good quality olive oil and patient cooking, then you will taste the dishes in their true essence.