“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.” SauceItalian CookingTomato SauceAnchovies Book:The Wedding Officer Source: The Wedding Officer
“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.” OnionsItalian FoodItalian CookingSaucesTomato Sauce Book:The Wedding Officer Source: The Wedding Officer
“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.” HerbsItalian CookingSaucesRaguTomato Sauce Book:The Wedding Officer Source: The Wedding Officer
