THE ITALIAN TABLE
Anna Del
Conte’s latest cookbook shares Italian dishes with vegetables as the star.
Celebrating vegetables in all their versatility and treating them with the reverence they deserve is Anna Del Conte’s aim in her latest cookbook, Vegetables all’Italiana. The food writer, historian and matriarch of Italian cooking in the UK, talks of when she first moved to Britain in the 1940s in an era when “most people were not interested in food of any kind” and vegetables were usually served limp and boiled, with no flavour, and then only as a side for meat or fish.
At the time, she worked as an au pair for an English family that appreciated good food, and when asked one day to prepare carrots from their vegetable garden, won them over by preparing them “all’italiana” – in the everyday Italian way – chopped into thin discs, sautéed with a little oil, margarine (the rationed butter was saved for spreading on bread), onion and stock.
Del Conte is credited with giving Italian cuisine a foothold in mid-20th-century Britain and with influencing the likes of Nigella Lawson and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. She describes that carrot dish as one of her greatest culinary triumphs.
One of her earlier titles, Gastronomy of Italy, a comprehensive reference book first published in 1987, is recommended reading for professional chefs and home cooks alike. Her latest book, which the recipes in the following pages are drawn from, follows an a-z format, showing how much you can do with vegetables from aglio (that is, garlic) to zucchina. All bring vegetables to the forefront: “there are no pasta sauces and no risotto recipes here, because in these instances, the main ingredient would be the pasta or the rice, not the vegetable,” she says.
Although her recipes are mostly vegetarian, Del Conte often intensifies flavours with chicken stock, parmesan or pancetta, such as in her Lenticchie in Umido coi Pomodori Secchi, stewed lentils with sun-dried tomatoes, although these can often be omitted or swapped out for vegetarian alternatives. In fact, Del Conte encourages experimentation and creativity, advising you to cook from her recipes once or twice and then go off-road and create your own signature take. “You will enjoy cooking far more if you don’t stick literally to the gospel of a recipe book,” she says.
Praising the flavour, texture and seasonality of the produce you use is more important than following a script, as is paying attention to the proportions of ingredients along with a good dose of care and patience. That, says Del Conte, will teach you to cook in a truly Italian way.