Sublime

it is a marvellous ingredient, seasoning, binding, giving richness, bringing everything together.

Also a 3kg bag of archetti, little curved remnants, reminders that before it was cut spaghetti hung over a stick.

To get vegetables to work as sauces, though, they need to be cooked until soft, coated generously with olive oil and seasoned with chilli, or garlic, or anchovy, the dish finished with cheese.

fusilli, single or double spiral, is the third most popular shape in Italy.

I now realize that strong opinions about ragù, or any dish for that matter, are expressions of nostalgia. That repeating them is almost as comforting as eating the dish because it’s another way of saying this is the way I know this is and how I hope it will stay.

Penne is a doubly good sauce collector, both on its ridges, and – like a dip pen collecting ink – in its slanted tip.

There are two pots of salt by the cooker. One of sale grosso, coarse, rubbly sea salt ideal for salting pasta water, in it a spoon that holds almost exactly 10 grams. The other pot is of sale fino, fine salt, also sea salt, for everything else. I am a great believer in adding little, often, that is adding tiny, cautious pinches of salt throughout c