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Anthony Capella

Anthony Capella Biography

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“Seafood, of course, has aphrodisiac qualities. Mollusks, too---like lanarche ajo e ojo, snails in oil and garlic. Perhaps some carciofioni, baby artichokes cooked with mint, pulled apart with the fingers and dipped in soft, melted butter. Wine, obviously. And then, to finish, a burst of sugar, something light but artificial, so that you feel full of energy and happiness---but that's only one side of the story. If you want someone to fall in love with you, you would cook for them something very different, something perfectly simple but intense. Something that shows you understand their soul." "Such as?" "Well, that's the difficulty. It will vary from individual to individual. You'd have to really know the person concerned---their history, their background, whether they are raw or refined, dry or oily. You would have to have tasted them, to know whether their own flesh is sweet or savory, salty or bland. In short, you would have to love them, and even then you might not truly know them well enough to cook a dish that would capture their heart.”

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“This was the gastronomic heartland of Italy, where every inch of the fertile soil was cultivated. In Parma he visited shops festooned with hams, each one postmarked with the stamps of a dozen different inspectors---the regions of Italy are fiercely protective of their produce, and only a handful of towns between the Enza and Stirone Rivers are allowed to designate themselves as true producers of prosciutto di Parma. Because the huge lofts in which the hams are aged are always left open to the wind, the villages of the Enza valley seemed scented with the aromatic sweetness of the meat as he drove through them. In the valley to the north of Parma, he sampled culatello di zibello, perhaps the greatest of all Parma's pork products and for that reason almost never exported, even to other parts of Italy: a pig's rump, marinated in salt and spices, then sewn inside a pig's bladder and aged for eighteen months in the humid air of the flat river basin, a process so delicate that almost half the hams are spoiled before they are ready, but which leaves the rest incomparably delicious.”

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“Each time Vesuvius erupted, it covered its slopes with a deep layer of a remarkable natural fertilizer called potash, and as a result the mountain supported dozens of species of fruit and vegetables which grew nowhere else in all Italy, a culinary advantage which more than compensated for the area's occasional dangers. In the case of apricots, the varieties included the firm-fleshed Cafona, the juicy Palummella, the bittersweet Boccuccia liscia, the peachlike Pellecchiella and the spiky-skinned but incomparably succulent Spinosa.”

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“Time passes, and as the hot midday sun and cool mountain nights alternately bake and freeze the blackened landscape of Vesuvius, something remarkable happens. Gradually, the streams of cold lava are colonized by a lichen, stereocaulon vesuvianim. This lichen is so tiny that it is almost invisible to the naked eye, but as it grows, it turns the lava from black to silvery gray. Where the lichen has gone, other plants can follow- first mugwort, valerian, and Mediterranean scrub, but later ilex and birch trees, along with dozens of species of apricot. Meanwhile, the clinkers and ash that covered the landscape like so much grubby gray snow are slowly, inexorably, working their way into the fields and the vineyards, crumbling as they do so, adding their richness to the thick black soil, and an incomparable flavor to tomatoes, zucchini, eggplants, fruit and all the other produce which grows there.”

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“The restaurant owner brought them wine, pale and golden and cool. There were just four oysters each, and when they were all gone they turned their attention to the cecinella. After the soft shapeless texture of the oysters these were almost the opposite: hard, crunchy skeletons whose flavor was all on the outside, a crisp bite of garlic and peperone that dissolved to nothing in your mouth. The ricci, or sea urchins, were another taste again, salty and exotic and rich. It was hard to believe that he had once thought they could be an austerity measure. After that they were brought without being asked a dish of baby octopus, cooked with tomatoes and wine mixed with the rich, gamey ink of a squid. For dessert the owner brought them two peaches. Their skins were wrinkled and almost bruised, but the flesh, when James cut into it with his knife, was unspoiled and perfectly ripe, so dark it was almost black. He was about to put a slice into his mouth when Livia stopped him. "Not like that. This is how we eat peaches here." She cut a chunk from the peach into her wine, then held the glass to his lips. He took it, tipping the wine and fruit together into his mouth. It was a delicious, sensual cascade of sensations, the sweet wine and the sweet peach rolling around his mouth before finally, he had to bite it, releasing the fruit's sugary juices. It was like the oyster all over again, a completely undreamt-of experience, and one that he found stirringly sexual, in some strange way that he couldn't have defined.”

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“As far as he was concerned, Testaccio, not the Via del Corso or the Piazza del Campidoglio, was the real heart of Rome. For centuries animals had been brought here to be butchered, with the good cuts going to the noblemen in their palazzos and the cardinals in the Vatican. The ordinary people had to make do with what little was left---the so-called quinto quarto, the "fifth quarter" of the animal: the organs, head, feet, and tail. Little osterie had sprung up that specialized in cooking these rejects, and such was the culinary inventiveness of the Romans that soon even cardinals and noblemen were clamoring for dishes like coda all vaccinara, oxtail braised in tomato sauce, or caratella d' abbachio, a newborn lamb's heart, lungs, and spleen skewered on a stick of rosemary and simmered with onions in white wine. Every part of the body had its traditional method of preparation. Zampetti all' aggro were calf's feet, served with a green sauce made from anchovies, capers, sweet onions, pickled gherkins, and garlic, finely chopped, then bound with potato and thinned with oil and vinegar. Brains were cooked with butter and lemon---cervello al limone---or poached with vegetables, allowed to cool, then thinly sliced and fried in an egg batter. Liver was wrapped in a caul, the soft membrane that envelops a pig's intestines, which naturally bastes the meat as it melts slowly in the frying pan. There was one recipe for the thymus, another for the ear, another for the intestines, and another for the tongue---each dish refined over centuries and enjoyed by everyone, from the infant in his high chair to the nonnina, the little grandmother who would have been served exactly the same meal, prepared in the same way, when she herself was a child.”

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“His antipasto was the classic Roman fritto misto---tiny morsels of mixed offal, including slivers of poached brains and liver, along with snails, artichokes, apples, pears, and bread dipped in milk, all deep-fried in a crisp egg-and-bread-crumb batter. This was to be followed by a primo of rigatoni alla pajata---pasta served with intestines from a baby calf so young that they were still full of its mother's milk, simmered with onions, white wine, tomatoes, cloves, and garlic. For the secondo they would be having milza in umido--- a stewed lamb's spleen, cooked with sage, anchovies, and pepper. A bitter salad of puntarelle al' acciuga---chicory sprouts with anchovy---would cleanse the palate, to be followed by a simple dolce of fragole in aceto, gorella strawberries in vinegar.”

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“It smelled of baking cakes, which sent her back to the kitchen of her childhood, coming home from school to find her mother in the kitchen, making cookies... but it also smelled medicinal, and that made her think of being ill and being looked after when she was tucked in bed. Then there were spices, and a faint hint of Christmas---nutmeg, perhaps, and cloves---but underneath all of those was something else, something insidiously smooth and emollient, like vanilla or eucalyptus. She had a sudden memory of kissing her father's cheek as he bent to say good night, the rasp of his five-o'clock shadow and that smell... She had it now: it was the smell of his cologne, the smell of his business suits, the smell of her parents' bedroom and the big double bed and the terrifying, dark thought of what went on there. But after another moment she relaxed. There were comforting smells in there too: apples and brandy and crisp butter pastry and cinnamon.”

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“Stuffed whole suckling pig is a feast-day specialty everywhere in Italy, although each region cooks it slightly differently. In Rome the piglet would be stuffed with its own fried organs; in Sardinia, with a mixture of lemons and minced meat. Here, evidently, the stuffing was made with bread crumbs and herbs. He could make out each individual component of the mixture: finocchio selvatico---wild fennel---garlic, rosemary, and olives, mingling with the smell of burning pork fat from the fire, which spit green flame briefly wherever the juices from the little pig, running down its trotters, dropped into it.”

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“Eels from the Tiber are a traditional Roman delicacy, pan-cooked with soft onions, garlic, chiles, tomatoes, and white wine, but a much more common dish is baccalà, preserved salt-cured cod, which is fried in thin strips, then simmered in a tomato sauce flavored with anchovies, pine nuts, and raisins. For really good fresh fish, you are better off heading either up or down the coast, toward Civitavecchia to the north or Gaeta to the south.”

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“In the half darkness, piles of fish rose on either side of him, and the pungent stink of fish guts assaulted his nostrils. On his left hung a whole tuna, its side notched to the spine to show the quality of the flesh. On his right a pile of huge pesce spada, swordfish, lay tumbled together in a crate, their swords protruding lethally to catch the legs of unwary passersby. And on a long marble slab in front of him, on a heap of crushed ice dotted here and there with bright yellow lemons, where the shellfish and smaller fry. There were ricco di mare---sea urchins---in abundance, and oysters, too, but there were also more exotic delicacies---polpi, octopus; aragosti, clawless crayfish; datteri di mare, sea dates; and grancevole, soft-shelled spider crabs, still alive and kept in a bucket to prevent them from making their escape. Bruno also recognized tartufo di mare, the so-called sea truffle, and, right at the back, an even greater prize: a heap of gleaming cicale. Cicale are a cross between a large prawn and a small lobster, with long, slender front claws. Traditionally, they are eaten on the harbor front, fresh from the boat. First their backs are split open. Then they are marinated for an hour or so in olive oil, bread crumbs, salt, and plenty of black pepper, before being grilled over very hot embers. When you have pulled them from the embers with your fingers, you spread the charred, butterfly-shaped shell open and guzzle the meat col bacio----"with a kiss," leaving you with a glistening mustache of smoky olive oil, greasy fingers, and a tingling tongue from licking the last peppery crevices of the shell. Bruno asked politely if he could handle some of the produce. The old man in charge of the display waved him on. He would have expected nothing less. Bruno raised a cicala to his nose and sniffed. It smelled of ozone, seaweed, saltwater, and that indefinable reek of ocean coldness that flavors all the freshest seafood. He nodded. It was perfect.”

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“What sort of pasta are you making?" "Pasta con funghi." He watched as she took a bowl of strange, round, reddish brown mushrooms out of the larder. The air immediately filled with their rich, earthy scent. Ripe as a well-cellared cheese, but tinged with the odors of leaf mold and decay, it reminded him a little of the smell of offal in his native Roman dishes. "How many kinds of funghi do you cook with?" he asked. "Oh, hundreds. It just depends on what I find in the woods." "You pick these yourself?" "Of course." As the smell of funghi combined with the scent of hot butter and garlic in the frying pan, Bruno felt his nostrils flare. And not just his nostrils. The smell was stirring up his blood, awakening sensation in a part of him that had been quiescent for a long time.”

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“Do you have any anchovies?" she asked. Enzo's mother looked as if she was about to explode. "Anchovies?" In Naples, anchovies were only added to tomatoes if you were making puttanesca, the sauce traditionally associated with prostitutes. "Please. If you have some," Livia said demurely. Quartilla appeared to be about to say something else, but then she shrugged and fetched a small jar of anchovies from a cupboard. The sauce Livia made was not puttanesca, but like puttanesca it was powerful and fiery. It was also remarkably simple, a celebration of the flavor of its main ingredients. She tipped the anchovies, together with their oil, into a pan, and added three crushed cloves of garlic and a generous spoonful of peperoncino flakes. When the anchovies and garlic had dissolved into a paste, she put in plenty of sieved tomatoes, to which she added a small amount of vinegar. The mixture simmered sluggishly, spitting little blobs of red sauce high into the air, like a pan full of lava. After three minutes Livia dropped a few torn basil leaves into the sauce.”

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“A little farther on she managed to find some zucchini she was happy with, and back in the kitchen he watched as she sorted them into two piles, one of wrist-thick vegetables with veined orange flowers at the end, the other of star-shaped open flowers. "These are pretty," he remarked, picking up one of the blooms. "They taste good too." "You eat the flowers?" he said, surprised. "Of course. We have them stuffed with mozzarella, then dipped in a little batter and fried. But only the male flowers. The female ones are too soft." "I hadn't realized," he said, taking one and tucking it behind her ear, "that flowers could be male and female. Let alone edible." "Everything is male and female. And everything is edible. You just need to remember to cook them differently." "In England we say, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." "How very stupid. A goose has a light taste, so you would cook it in a gentle white wine sauce, perhaps with a little tarragon or oregano. But a gander has a strong, gamey flavor. It needs rich tastes: red wine, perhaps, or mushrooms. It's the same with a gallina, a hen, and a pollastrello, a cock." She glanced sideways at him. "If the English try to cook a pollastrello and a gallinathe same way, it explains a lot." "Such as?" he asked, curious. But she was busy with her cooking, and only rolled her eyes at him as if the answer were too obvious to mention.”

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“A little farther on she managed to find some zucchini she was happy with, and back in the kitchen he watched as she sorted them into two piles, one of wrist-thick vegetables with veined orange flowers at the end, the other of star-shaped open flowers. "These are pretty," he remarked, picking up one of the blooms. "They taste good too." "You eat the flowers?" he said, surprised. "Of course. We have them stuffed with mozzarella, then dipped in a little batter and fried. But only the male flowers. The female ones are too soft." "I hadn't realized," he said, taking one and tucking it behind her ear, "that flowers could be male and female. Let alone edible." "Everything is male and female. And everything is edible. You just need to remember to cook them differently." "In England we say, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." "How very stupid. A goose has a light taste, so you would cook it in a gentle white wine sauce, perhaps with a little tarragon or oregano. But a gander has a strong, gamey flavor. It needs rich tastes: red wine, perhaps, or mushrooms. It's the same with a gallina, a hen, and a pollastrello, a cock." She glanced sideways at him. "If the English try to cook a pollastrello and a gallina the same way, it explains a lot." "Such as?" he asked, curious. But she was busy with her cooking, and only rolled her eyes at him as if the answer were too obvious to mention.”

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“Livia had burnt the onions. And not just any onions, but the ones in her famous sugo alla genovese, that wonderful sauce of reduced onions, flavored with beef stock, celery and chopped parsley, that together with pummarola and ragù form the holy trinity of Neapolitan pasta sauces. To make a true genovese the onions have to be cooked for around five hours over the gentlest heat, stirring occasionally to prevent them from sticking to the bottom of the pan and splashing them with water whenever they look like they are drying out. Onions are remarkable things, for cooked like this they lose almost all their familiar oniony taste and become an intensely sweet, aromatic jam, yet if a single piece happens to burn in the cooking, the acrid taste will permeate the whole dish.”

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“Livia could have made a sugo blindfold- she had been making it almost every day for years. The only difficulty was, there were as many different kinds of sugo as there were days in a month. There was the everyday version, which might be no more than a handful of ripe tomatoes squashed with the tip of a knife to release the juices, then quickly fried in oil. There was the classic version, in which the tomatoes were simmered along with some garlic and onions until they had reduced to a thick, pulpy stew. Then there was a richer version, in which pieces of meat were cooked for several hours to extract all the flavor, and so on all the way up to ragù del guardaporte, the gatekeeper's sauce, so called because it required someone to sit by it all day, adding little splashes of water to stop the rolls of meat stuffed with parsley, garlic and cheese from drying out.”

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“It was Colomba who had coined the nickname stecchetto, little toothpick, for Livia, because she was so scrawny. She had filled out a little since her sixteenth birthday, but she would never have Colomba's curves. Then she saw Enzo was getting up from his place and coming toward her. She turned away. He did not stop, but as he passed her he whispered, "I was right the first time, when I called you an angel. Because surely only an angel could cook like that." "Save your flattery for whoever wins the beauty contest," she said. But she flushed with pleasure despite herself, and when she saw Colomba Farelli looking at her with daggers in her eyes, it was nice to be able to smile sweetly in return.”

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“The next day they went to pick fragole di bosco, wild strawberries, and made love in a deserted old barn above the pastures, their lips still smeared with the pulp of the fruit. The next day it was misticanza, wild leaves for salad. Benedetta was scrupulous that they must always pick first. If anyone saw them walking home with empty baskets, she warned, tongues would start wagging instantly. So they filled their baskets with rocket, wild fennel, dandelion, and lamb's lettuce before temptation overcame them and they collapsed into a quiet corner of a field, hidden only by the tall fronds of the finocchio stalks. Bruno made her close her eyes, teasing her naked body with a spray of fennel: when he kissed her between her legs, the aniseed mingled with the faint, faraway taste of the sea. We were all fish once, he thought, and this is the proof of it, this whisper of oceans in the deepest recesses of the body.”

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“These truffles were a different thing altogether from the summer truffle he and Benedetta had found earlier in the year. Pale in color and as large as potatoes, they were both awesomely pungent and deeply intoxicating. Gusta and Benedetta threw them into every dish as casually as if they were throwing in parsley, and after a while Bruno did the same. He would never forget the first time they cooked a wild boar with celery and truffles: the dark, almost rank meat and the sulfuric reek of the tuber combined to form a taste that made him shiver. He was aware that Benedetta was deliberately cooking dishes designed to bind him to her. As well as the truffles, there was robiola del bec, a cheese made from the milk of a pregnant ewe, rich in pheromones. There were fiery little diavolilli, strong chile peppers that had been left to dry in the sun. Plates of fried funghi included morsels of Amanita, the ambrosia of the gods, said to be a natural narcotic. He didn't mind. He was doing the same to her: offering her unusual gelati flavored with saffron, the delicate pollen of the crocus flower; elaborate tarts of myrtle and chocolate; salads made with lichens and even acorns from her beloved woods. It was a game they played, based on their intimate appreciation of the taste of each other's bodies, so that the food and the sex became one harmonious whole, and it became impossible to say where eating ended and lovemaking began.”

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“She had never eaten food like this before. No: she had never eaten before. It was as if these flavors had always existed, had always been there in her imagination, but now she was tasting them properly for the very first time. Each course was more intense than the last. The spaghetti was coated in a thick sauce of meat, tomatoes, and wine, rich, pungent, and sticky. The lamb, by contrast, was pink and sweet, so tender it seemed to dissolve in her mouth. It was served without vegetables, but afterward Tommaso brought the first of the contorni to the table: a whole artichoke, slathered in warm olive oil and lemon juice and sprinkled with chopped mint. Laura licked every drop of oil off her fingers, amazed by the depth of the flavor.”

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“He dipped his fork into the layers of eggplant and cheese. Moments later, it seemed to detonate in his mouth. The pasta, he now realized, had simply been a curtain raiser, carbohydrate to take the edge off his hunger, but this new dish was something else, teasing his appetite awake again, the intensity of the flavors bringing to life taste buds he had never even known existed. The cheese tasted so completely of cheese, the eggplant so rich and earthy, almost smoky; the herbs so full of flavor, requiring only a mouthful of wine to finish them off... He paused reverently and drank, then dug again with his fork. The secondo was followed by a simple dessert of sliced pears baked with honey and rosemary. The flesh of the fruit looked as crisp and white as something Michelangelo might have carved with, but when he touched his spoon to it, it turned out to be as meltingly soft as ice cream. Putting it in his mouth, he was at first aware only of a wonderful, unfamiliar taste, a cascade of flavors which gradually broke itself down into its constituent parts. There was the sweetness of the honey, along with a faint floral scent from the abundant Vesuviani blossom on which the bees had fed. Then came the heady, sunshine-filled fragrance of the herbs, and only after that, the sharp tang of the fruit itself. By the time the pears were eaten, both jugs of wine had been emptied too.”

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“There were myrtle berries to pick and then to serve gratinéed with a topping of mascarpone. There were blackberries to gather, to make into pastries and sorbets. Chestnuts and walnuts added their sweet richness to pasta sauces and stews. The walnut trees were surrounded with bibs of white netting, to catch any prematurely falling fruit, and whole families climbed the trees to pick or walked down the rows of grapes in the vineyards with baskets on their backs, picking the fruit that would become the local wine.”

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“The carciofini were good at the moment, no doubt about it, particularly the romagnolo, a variety of artichoke exclusive to the region, so sweet and tender it could even be eaten raw. Puntarelle, a local bitter chicory, would make a heavenly salad. In the Vini e Olio he found a rare Torre Ercolana, a wine that combined Cabernet and Merlot with the local Cesanese grape. The latter had been paired with the flavors of Roman cuisine for over a thousand years: they went together like an old married couple. There was spring lamb in abundance, and he was able to track down some good abbachio, suckling lamb that had been slaughtered even before it had tasted grass. From opportunities like these, he began to fashion a menu, letting the theme develop in his mind. A Roman meal, yes, but more than that. A springtime feast, in which every morsel spoke of resurgence and renewal, old flavors restated with tenderness and delicacy, just as they had been every spring since time began. He bought a bottle of oil that came from a tiny estate he knew of, a fresh pressing whose green, youthful flavors tasted like a bowl of olives just off the tree. He hesitated before a stall full of fat white asparagus from Bassano del Grappa, on the banks of the fast-flowing river Brenta. It was outrageously expensive, but worth it for such quality, he decided, as the stallholder wrapped a dozen of the pale spears in damp paper and handed it to Bruno with a flourish, like a bouquet of the finest flowers. His theme clarified itself the more he thought about it. It was to be a celebration of youth---youth cut short, youth triumphant, youth that must be seized and celebrated.”

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“It was salty, it was sweet, it was fishy, it was liquor, it was like a deep breath of seaweedy air and a mouthful of sea spray all at once. He bit once, involuntarily, and felt the flavors in his mouth swell and burst like a wave. Before he knew what he had done he had swallowed, and then there was another sensation; another flavor, as the soft shapeless mass wriggled past the back of his throat, leaving a faint, cool aftertaste of brine. He felt a sudden sense that nothing would be the same again. Eve in her garden had bitten an apple. James had eaten an oyster, sitting outside a tiny restaurant overlooking the sea by Sorrento. His undernourished heart swelled in the Italian sunshine like a ripening fig and he laughed out loud. With a great flood of gratitude he realized that he was having the time of his life.”

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“It never ceased to surprise him how many of her dishes were cooked without meat. Her pasta sauces often consisted of just one or two ingredients, such as garlic and oil, or grated lemon zest and cream. Many more were based on a vegetable, with peperone, anchovy or cheese providing a subtle kick. Often it didn't occur to him that he hadn't eaten meat until after the meal was over. His very favorite dish was her melanzane alla parmigiana, but it was only as his palate became more trained that he realized this, too, contained nothing more substantial than dense chunks of eggplant. As for gravy, he had never missed it once. He mentioned this to her, and she laughed. "We've never had a lot of meat to spare in Campania. Even before the war, it was expensive. So we had to learn to use our ingenuity.”

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“We eat spaghetti all' amatriciana, with a sauce of guanciale, which is the pig's" ---he ran his finger down her cheek, briefly, a touch so fleeting she was hardly aware it had happened---"this part of the pig's face. We fry it in olive oil with a little chile, some tomatoes, and of course some grated pecorino romano, hard cheese. Or if you don't want spaghetti, you could have bucatini, or calscioni, or fettuccine, or pappardelle, or tagliolini, or rigatoni, or linguine, or garganelli, or tonnarelli, or fusilli, or conchiglie, or vermicelli, or maccheroni, but---" he held up a warning finger---"each of them demands a different kind of sauce. For example, an oily sauce goes with dried pasta, but a butter sauce goes better with fresh. Take fusilli." He held up a packet to show her. "People say this pasta was designed by Leonardo da Vinci himself. The spiral fins carry the maximum amount of sauce relative to the surface area, you see? But it only works with a thick, heavy sauce that can cling to the grooves. Conchiglie, on the other hand, is like a shell, so it holds a thin, liquid sauce inside it perfectly.”

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“The dessert was tartufo, a dark chocolate gelato dusted with cocoa. Eighty-five percent of the world's chocolate is made from the common or garden-variety Forastero cocoa bean. About 10 percent is made from the finer, more subtle Trinitario bean. And less than 5 percent is made from the rare, aromatic Criollo bean, which is found only in the remotest regions of Colombia and Venezuela. These beans are so sought after that, pound for pound, they can command prices many times higher than the other local crop, cocaine. Having been fermented, shipped, lightly roasted and finally milled to a thickness of about fifteen microns, the beans are finally cooked into tablets, even a tiny crumb of which, placed on the tongue, explodes with flavor as it melts. A tartufo is a chocolate gelato shaped to look like a truffle, but it is an appropriate name for other reasons, too. Made from egg yolk, sugar, a little milk, and plenty of the finest Criollo chocolate, with a buried kick of chile, Bruno's tartufo was as richly sensual and overpowering as the fungus from which it took its name---and even more aphrodisiac.”

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“Take one of the dishes you will be eating tonight, fritto misto. The old butcher who sold me the meat was most insistent that it should be cooked the old way---so brains, for example, are always poached in vegetables, then left to cool before being sliced and deep-fried in batter. But then you think, this batter is not so different from Japanese tempura, and tempura can be served with a sweet chile and soy dipping sauce, so why not make an Italian version of that, perhaps with balsamic vinegar from Modena instead of soy, and see what happens”

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“Bruno eased one of the cheeses to the surface and inhaled. Instantly he was transported to the tiny pastures of the Castelli Romani, the hilly countryside around Rome. There was a touch of silage in the scent of the cheese, from winter feed, but there was fresh grass, too, and sunlight, and the faintest tang of thyme where it grew wild in the meadows and had been eaten by the sheep along with the grass. He didn't really need any more food, but the ricotta was so perfect that he knew he would find a place for it somewhere in his meal, perhaps served as a dessert with a dusting of cinnamon and a dab of sweet honey.”

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Book:The Food of Love
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“He spooned the zabaglione into ramekins and slid them into the fridge. They were to form part of a complex assemblage of warm and cold, consisting of a fresh peach gelato, just starting to thaw; then zabaglione made with Barolo wine, slightly chilled; then a warm froth of more zabaglione, a thicker one this time, made with the yolks of goose eggs and rich, sherry like marsala; and finally a topping of crisp fried mint leaves and freshly roasted espresso beans, arranged like the petals and seeds of a flower on top of the other ingredients.”

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Book:The Food of Love
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