Tomas Tengby - Art of Italian Cooking

Copyright 2012, 2022 by Tomas Tengby and Ulrika Tengby Holm

Originally published as Viva Italia! by Tomas Tengby & Ulrike Tengby Holm by Norstedts, Sweden in 2011. Published by agreement with Norstedts Agency.

First Skyhorse edition 2012 entitled Viva Italia

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by David Ter-Avanesyan

Cover photograph by Ulrika Tengby Holm

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-7326-4

ebook ISBN to 978-1-5107-7335-6

Printed in China

Contents

PRIMI

SECONDI

All recipes serve four people unless otherwise specified.

GUEST COOKS

We have eaten, enjoyed, and documented everything there is to try in Italy.

THIS IS THE BOOK WEVE ALWAYS DREAMED OF WRITING.

For twenty years we have been traveling to Italy as often as possible, but far from as often as we might have wanted. We have rented houses and apartments and stayed in hotels. We have continually discovered new places and revisited the old and familiar ones. In a sense, we have always been preparing to write The Great Italian Cookbook.

Food has always been our main focus. This happens easily in Italy.

The fantastic ingredients. The wonderful flavors. All the ingenious, simple dishes.

We have eaten, enjoyed, and documented it all.

We have traveled around the north, through the Italian Alps, and seen Lake Como, Lake Garda, Verona, Venice. We have explored the cities of Tuscany: cultural and historical giants like Florence, Siena, and Volterra. The delicious food in charming Bologna. The great Rome that somehow still feels intimate. The sun, sea, mozzarella, and lemons of the Bay of Naples and the Amalfi Coast. Peaceful Sardinia with its distinct food and nature, and vast, friendly, hospitable Sicily, where a millenniums worth of history shows itself everywherein landscapes, in the architecture, and not least in the food.

THESE PLACES HAVE BECOME OUR FRIENDS. One learns to know them, to know their best sides, know their secrets, and know what to shy away from. They feel safe. They are welcoming and familiar. And even when you think you know them all too well, theyll suddenly surprise you with a new side of themselves.

Food plays a key role in our relationship with Italy, but everything is bound together. The people, their hospitality, their love of children, simplicity, effortlessness, the landscapes, art, culture, elegance, fashioneverything you could ever want!

Italians know how to make life enjoyable. La dolce vita, the sweet life. You dont have to live in Italy to experience it, but it certainly helps!

OVER THE COURSE OF THESE TWENTY YEARS, OUR relationship with Italian food has only grown stronger. And the more weve learned, the more apparent its become that Italian food is mainly about three things: simplicity, clarity, and flavor. Thats a combination that is hard to resist.

In Italy, people are locally patriotic; they are not Italian but rather Tuscan, Sicilian, or Piedmontese. If they meet someone from the same region, they will identify with their province, and then their town or city. No one is surprised if someone badmouths a food from another area. Ones local cuisine is always the best.

As Swedes we didnt grow up with these traditions, preferences, and set points of view. Our advantage as non-Italians is that we can enjoy all of the great food of Italy without the interference of a regionally biased appetite; we can love dishes from North as well as South, because we dont have to be loyal to a certain heritage.

Simply put: We have worked to bring Italy to Swedenand now to the US.

Sometimes dreams actually happen.

Ulrika and Tomas

Food Is life

Whether its a weekday or the weekend, for an Italian, the meals are always the highlight of the day. In between, they talk about the food they have eaten and the food they will be eating. Because life should be enjoyed. A lovely meal with good foodsomething that is often reserved for holidays and other special occasions in other parts of Europe and the USis nothing out of the ordinary in Italy. An Italian expects to eat good food for lunch and dinner all week long. Its also important to share the food with others and eat togetherpreferably with people you like.

We were in a small coastal town in the far south of Tuscany. In the harbor, right behind a small cozy trattoria, there is a tiny little beach. As we were enjoying the sun we couldnt help but overhear the conversation of a few Italians, a number of well-dressed ladies and a young man who had just arrived. He was saying that he had just come from Rome and that it was his first time visiting this place.

And what do you eat here? he asked.

You should be very pleased that you came here, the women quickly responded, because here you will find the best food.

Oh, well, we all know that Rome has the best food, the man protested

These strangers continued to talk about food for twenty minutes.

The ladies described one delicious dish after the other. The man from Rome only agreed that it sounded interesting, though a tad bit different, and clearly not on par with the cuisine of the capital, which he went on to describe in detail.

Thats Italy.

You talk about food.

What did you eat today? is a common way to open a conversation; the conversation will continue with, And what will you eat later? Italians will talk about the wonderful meals they have eaten and the ones they have yet to eat, and theyll discuss the lovely produce thats in season, or will be soon.

Its an American misconception that we must live to work. Or, for that matter, that we must eat to live. Every Italian knows that food is life, and life is food.