I have just been staying for a couple of days with my good friend Anna del Conte whose wonderful books on Italian food many of you will already know, as many of her recipes have appeared on the foodsmatter.com recipe pages (Just type Anna del Conte into the search box when you get there…)
This may seem odd to those for whom the words ‘Italian food’ conjure up an endless procession of pasta and pizza. But for those who really know Italian food it is so much more than just pasta and pizza: flesh of every kind raw, smoked, dried, boiled, baked; offal lightly sauted in butter or spiced and herbed into wonderful sausages and salamis; every kind of flatfish and shellfish, steamed, fried, sharpened with vinegar, gently flavoured with herbs; vegetables of every colour and texture cooked and raw, served as salads, as accompaniments and as delicious main dishes; rice and corn turned into everything from the lightest and most sophisticated of risottos to hearty, warming winter dishes of polenta; sun ripened fruits, raw or gently poached; sorbets and granitas to cool the hottest afternoon…
In none of these dishes do gluten or dairy products make more than the most fleeting, occasional appearances and, when they do, they are easy to substitute without damaging the flavour or character of the dish.
How delightfully would the culinary possibilities for those with gluten, wheat or dairy allergies/intolerances be expanded if they were to look further than the classic Italian ‘menu touristico’ – although, since Italian pasta makers really applied their minds to alternative ingredients, and the soya and oat milk manufacturers perfected their ‘creams’, it is also possible to create most of the traditional pasta dishes very successfully both gluten and dairy free.
And while on the subject of Italian food, can I have a mini rant which has nothing to do with freefrom? Call me old fashioned, but I find that so much of modern ‘fusion’ food is trying so hard to ‘fuse’ unlikely flavours that it just ends up with a collection of different flavours together on a plate which may each be interesting in themselves but which fail to meld into a total experience.
Whenever, however, I cook one of Anna’s recipes, the ingredients and the accompaniments (rice, corn, vegetables…) do truly fuse to create a single deep and complex flavour with a series of different notes – not a selection of different flavours grouped together on the plate. And so often, the many layered flavour of the dish is created from a very few carefully chosen, very fresh and carefully cooked ingredients.
Take, for example, her classic Ossubuco Milanese ( p142 of Amaretto, Apple Cake and Artichokes published by Vintage). Apart from the ossubuci, the only ingredients are olive oil, a little flour for dusting, a little unsalted butter, 1 small onion, 1/2  a celery stick, dry white wine, a little meat stock and pepper with a sauce made from lemon rind, garlic and parsley, accompanied by  a simple saffron risotto.  How simple can you get? But you try it! The flavours are complex and subtle but they meld together to create a single, delicious whole…
Enough! the World Cup final is about to start – in our garden!………
