An Italian Feast

Some books call out to be included in my blog: replete with a range of dishes, sweet and savoury, with sufficient detail to enable me to make them in my own kitchen, it’s almost as though the author knew what I was up to!

One such book is Still Life by Sarah Winman. I’ve blogged about Winman’s writing previously in my post on Food and tragedy. That post focused on her debut novel When God was a rabbit, published in 2011, a sprawling and idiosyncratic novel spanning four decades in which an array of dishes are awkwardly juxtaposed against a series of tragic events.

Still Life – Winman’s fourth and most recent novel – was published in 2021, ten years after her first. Like When God was a rabbit it covers a long period of time: the narrative opens in 1944 in the latter stages of the Second World War and ends in 1979, though it is followed by a short postscript set in 1910. A long and exuberant novel, peopled by a collection of disparate and often eccentric characters who are brought together by their love of Italy, Still Life is a celebration of life, art and love.

At the centre of the novel are two characters: Ulysses Temper and Evelyn Skinner. When the novel opens in 1944 Ulysses is a young British soldier, posted to Italy, and Evelyn is a 64 year-old art historian who has come to Italy to assess the damage done to various art treasures by the war. A chance encounter between these two characters has reverberations for decades and transforms both their lives, though they do not meet again until 1966.

As well as a love of Italy and of art, a love of Italian food permeates the whole novel with abundant references to Italian dishes: ‘lentils and cotechino‘ (pork sausage); ‘ribollita‘ (a Tuscan bread soup), ‘brodo di pollo‘ (chicken soup), ‘pane casalingo‘ (home-made bread) and ‘bombolone alla crema‘ (cream-filled doughnut) are just some of the mouth-watering items that characters eat.

And unsurprisingly, there are many references to pasta. In the second section of the novel – set between 1946 and 1953 – with the war being over, Ulysses is back in England and, in a conversation with a friend, reminisces about a dish he ate in Italy: ‘when I was in Italy, a woman cooked me spaghetti and I’d never tasted anything like it. Bit spicy. Rich tomato sauce. It meant everything to me … I thought I was the luckiest man alive.’

At the end of this same section Ulysses receives a letter informing him that he has been bequeathed a house in Tuscany by a man whose life he saved during the war. It doesn’t take him long to decide to grab this opportunity: packing his few belongings, his ex-wife Peggy’s daughter, Alys (who was conceived in the war during Ulysses’ absence, and is commonly referred to as ‘the kid’) and his old friend Cress, Ulysses drives by car through France, back to Italy and back to more pasta: ‘spaghetti al pomodoro‘ (spaghetti with tomato sauce), ‘beef ragu and parpadelle‘ (slow cooked beef ragout with a broad, flat pasta) and ‘tagliatelle al tartufo‘ (tagliatelle pasta with black truffle) amongst others.

As well as making reference to a number of Italian dishes, Winman includes some general cooking instructions (which admittedly vary in their usefulness) at certain points in the story. Shortly after returning to Italy to claim his property, Ulysses decides to transform the lower floor of the house into a ‘pensione’ (boarding house). His notary, Massimo, is prompt to give him some tips, including for cooking pasta:

‘In the kitchen, in a haze of steam. Massimo said, If I teach you nothing else in your lifetime, it must be this. Learning the correct ratio of boiling water to salt to pasta. When to add the salt – lots of it. When to take the pasta off the heat. Get it right and you’ll always eat like a king.’

Unfortunately – apart from the specific injunction that pasta should be cooked in water with ‘lots of‘ salt, these instructions aren’t particularly helpful to the amateur cook (who then has to turn to the internet to find answers: 10 grams salt for 100g pasta in 1 litre water, according to The Epicurious Blog)

Later on, though, more helpful information is provided. In the 1966-67 section, Evelyn Skinner, now aged 86, returns to Italy, accompanied by her friend Dotty. On their way to Florence, via Rome, the two women stop for lunch in a cafe – Giuseppe Verdi’s – at the bus station in Rome. The narrator describes how, as soon as Evelyn opens her mouth, ‘she became an Italian again‘ and the two women settle down to a lunch of ‘spaghetti alla carbonara, bread and a carafe of house wine: white’.

Served with the spaghetti alla carbonara Evelyn and Dotty discuss its merits, in the process providing the reader with a loose version of the recipe :

‘The wine was crisp and reviving, the carbonara delicious. Wholly authentic, said Evelyn. In what way? said Dotty. No cream whatsoever. No cream? But it’s so creamy! The creaminess, said Evelyn, is purely yolk with the faintest hint of egg white. With the addition of cheese, both parmesan and pec-
I thought it was pecorino! said Dotty. And is the bacon bacon or another sleight of hand?
Not bacon, my darling. But guanciale. Pig jowl.
Guanciale, repeated Dotty. How I’ve missed Italy! A delicate crunch, and then your mouth floods with an oily saltiness.
The only seasoning, said Evelyn, is a grind, perhaps of pepper, and the whole ensemble brought together with a soupcon of pasta water.
Well I never.’

Spaghetti alla carbonara is a dish of spaghetti, bacon and cheese. It first appeared as a recipe in a cookery book published in Chicago in 1952, but it is thought the dish probably originated in Rome towards the end of the Second World War, possibly fuelled by the large quantities of bacon that American soldiers brought with them to Italy. Strictly speaking, as Evelyn notes, the dish uses guanciale, which is taken from the cheek of a pig, but pancetta, lardons or bacon can also be used. And my research suggested a similar flexibility with the choice of cheese (whether pecorino romano, parmesan or both) and whether the whole egg or just the yolk is used. One non-negotiable – within Italy at least – is that cream is never used in the sauce.

So, here is my version. Perhaps not as authentic as Evelyn would like, but authentically Italian with its creaminess being created by egg yolk (and a dash of white) alone.

SPAGHETTI ALLA CARBONARA
Ingredients (per person):
100g lardons (or diced pancetta / smoky bacon)
1 egg yolk (with the ‘faintest hint of egg white’ if you can engineer that)
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
75g spaghetti
Freshly ground black pepper

Method:
Heat a large saucepan of water to boiling point – add 1 teaspoon of salt and then add the spaghetti to cook for 9-11 minutes (approximately) until it is al dente (literally meaning ‘to the teeth’ pasta that is cooked al dente should have a bite to it, so not be too soft).
At the same time, place a small frying pan over a medium heat, and after a couple of minutes add the lardons to cook until starting to get crispy. There is no need to add any oil as the lardons will produce enough fat as they heat up.
When the pasta is cooked, drain it leaving behind a ‘soupcon’ of water (about 1 tablespoon per 75g of pasta). Quickly stir the cooked lardons and egg yolk into the pasta (speed is essential to prevent the egg from scrambling). When it is mixed through the pasta, add the grated Parmesan and stir through. Finally add a good grind of black pepper and serve.
Buon appetito!