How do you like it

On observing my weary disposition and puffy eyes, a perky Northern-European neo-mother at my Wednesday morning mum-in suggested I had a shot of wheatgrass. I was poised to tell her I was allergic to chlorophyll and perkiness but she’d already moved on and was busy informing the Mamma of the baby that looks like a mini Billy Joel, that she should give up sugar and take up Bikram yoga. Later that same week I met my Venetian friend Francesca. After commiserating each other on our continuing sleep deprivation and being extremely uncharitable about perky Mothers, green juice and sweaty yoga, Francesca suggested I had a shot of Tiramisù. 

Tiramisù, well made, is a fiendishly good pudding. A sort of extra-boozy, fruitless, caffeinated trifle dredged with cocoa. It’s prepared – constructed really – by alternating layers of Savoiardi or sponge biscuits soaked in espresso and dark rum with a soft, pale cream made from mascarpone cheese, eggs, sugar and more booze and finished with an extremely liberal dusting of unsweetened cocoa powder. Literally translated Tiramisù means pull-me-up or pick-me-up. It is a pick-me-up of considerable force, but one that shouldn’t impose or sit heavily. Rather it should delight and leave you wanting more more more.

After gelato - which isn’t really a pudding, more a way of life - Tiramisù is (probably) Italy’s most popular and ubiquitous dolce! You’ d be hard pressed to find a restaurant or trattoria that doesn’t have a vast cocoa dredged tray (to be served in much the same way as lasagna) or a cluster of individual Tiramisù in their fridge. It is however a relatively recent invention. Apparently – and who I am to doubt it – the original was created in the 1970′s at the restaurant Le Beccherie in Treviso. The idea caught on, and today there are as many recipes, tips and Tiramisù secrets as there are Tiramisù cooks.

I’m no native, but I’ve eaten my fair share of good, indifferent and downright bad slices, pots and glasses of Tiramisù.  Two of the good ones were in fact eaten in my neighbourhood: Testaccio. One, a properly boozy, well dusted, neat, squat bowlful, at Perilli. The other, an altogether more chaotic, tumbling affair served al bicchiere at the osteria built into a hill of broken pots: Flaviovalevodetto. Purists may need to look away, my recipe is a muddle of both these fine pick-me-ups along with a healthy splash of advice from Francesca, Russell Norman, a sweet guy called Josh I met on a tour and a woman I bumped into on the 30 bus.

Begin as you do your day, by making coffee: a strong, dark espresso. You need 150 ml for the Tiramisù, so make 200 ml and inhale a double. While the coffee is cooling, make your cream by gently whisking together the egg yolks with some of the sugar and a good glug of Marsala wine before adding the mascarpone and the mounted egg whites. Set the cream aside. Now stir the rest of the sugar and the rum to the warm coffee. From here on it’s all about assembly. I work one glass at a time.

Now I’m going to be long-winded – which is nothing new I know – because it matters. For each glass you will use two biscuits. Submerge a biscuit in the coffee mixture until it is sodden but not collapsing. Gently break the biscuit in two and tuck half in the base of the glass. Spoon over a tablespoon of your cream before placing the other half of the biscuit gently on top and covering it with another spoonful of cream. Using a fine sieve dust the surface with cocoa powder. Take another biscuit, dunk it in the cream and eat it. Take another biscuit and soak it, again break it in half and then place both halves side by side on top of the coaca dusted cream. Cover the surface with more cream. Repeat this process with the other 5 glasses. Store the glasses in the fridge for at least 8 hours, at least, so they are absolutely set. Before serving dust the surface of each pot very liberally with more cocoa powder. Eat.

I’m not sure why, but Tiramisù tastes better when eaten from a glass! Ideally a stout tumbler. The modest depth and sloping sides provide a perfect vessel for the six graduating layers (sponge, cream, sponge, cream, sponge, cream.) Actually nine layers if you include the cocoa, which can be sprinkled on top of each of the three layers of cream. A glass tumbler is also the perfect way to both display your imperfect layers and contain the inevitable chaos as you plunge your teaspoon down to the bottom of the glass in order to get a perfect spoonful. The perfect spoonful being: a soft clot of coffee and rum soaked sponge, a nice blob of pale, quivering cream, a good dusting of cocoa and just a little of the coffee and rum pond at the bottom of the glass.  Are you still with me? No! Maybe you need a shot of Tiramisù?

Notes. The espresso should be strong and freshly brewed. The Rum and Marsala needn’t be particularly fine, but obviously not rough-as-hell. That said, better quality booze makes for a finer pick-me-up. If you can’t find Marsala then you can replace it with a tablespoon of Rum. Mascarpone is a soft, rich cream cheese made by curdling thick cream with citric acid. It is lactic loveliness itself. If you have never used it before, I suggest you start now, with this recipe.

I am indebted to Russell Norman for his Tiramisù making technique in his super-stupendous book Polpo! By dipping each biscuit individually in the coffee and rum mixture you ensure each one is well soaked but not too sodden. His instructions for how to break and layer the biscuits  - again purists may need to look away – are great so I have included them almost word-for-word. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m feeling a little jaded! I think I might just need a little something to pick-me-up. Wheatgrass, I mean really!

Tiramisù

Inspired by Tiramisù at Perilli and Flaviovalevodetto in Testaccio. Adapted from Polpo with advice from Francesca, Josh and a nice woman at the bus stop.

Makes 6 glasses (Ideally 150 ml Duralex tumblers)

• 150 ml strong, warm espresso coffee
• 2 tbsp dark rum or brandy
• 130g caster sugar
• 12 Savoiardi biscuits /sponge fingers
• 3 eggs
• 250 ml mascarpone
• 80ml Marsala
• excellent cocoa powder for dusting liberally

Mix the warm espresso coffee with the rum and 50 g of sugar and stir until the sugar has dissolved.

Separate the eggs – yolks in one bowl, whites in another.  Add the Marsala and the remaining 80 g of sugar to the egg yolks and whisk until the mixture is light and fluffy before adding the mascarpone and stirring it in carefully. Whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Gently but firmly fold the egg whites into the yolk mixture with a metal spoon.

For each glass you will use two biscuits. Submerge a biscuit in the coffee mixture until it is sodden but not collapsing. Gently break the biscuit in two and tuck half in the base of the glass. Spoon over a tablespoon of your cream before placing the other half of the biscuit gently on top and covering it with another spoonful of cream. Using a fine sieve dust the surface with cocoa powder. Take another biscuit, soak it, again break it in half and then place both halves side by side on top of the coaca dusted cream. Cover the surface with more cream.

Repeat this process with the other 5 glasses. Store the glasses in the fridge for at least 8 hours, so they are absolutely set. Before serving dust the surface of each pot very liberally with more cocoa powder. Eat.

Just right.

Things have shifted. I’m not talking about the big things, even though they too seem to be shuffling, extremely slowly into a different, more comfortable sort of order. I’m talking about the little things, the everyday things: the daily routine with my little boy, the state of my flat, my waxing and plucking (it was out of control) my writing here, my reading, my teaching and life in my small, oddly shaped Roman kitchen.

Unexpectedly, after a period of swatting days and meals away like flies and after a summer of feeling cross and impatient with my kitchen, my food and myself, I seem to have found a new rhythm. A nice, uncharacteristically steady (and slightly jaunty) rhythm.  I’m also managing better: the shopping, the fridge, the planning of meals, the process of cooking itself. I’ve stopped worrying about making something clever and out of character to write about here and focused instead on what suits me (and Luca) now, in September, in Rome. I’ve returned to habits that had slipped away, making do, making stock, making double, making triple (tomato sauce), of soaking beans, big bags of them, which means the base and a head start of two, three, maybe even four meals. I’ve been – for once – using my loaf.

So with another wedge of three-day-old-bread on the counter, ricotta salata in the fridge, tomato season sprinting to the finish line and with me bobbing along to this new, unexpected rhythm, there was no debate. No debate as to which recipe to make from Luisa’s book, the first book I have properly buried my head in and inhaled since Luca was born a year ago. It would be Tomato Bread Soup.

But before I talk about Luisa’s Tomato bread soup and the moment ‘When the bread cubes hit the silky tomatoes, they go all custardy and soft’  I’d like to talk a little about her book, a memoir with recipes, My Berlin Kitchen.

Having followed her blog The Wednesday Chef for five years, I already knew Luisa was a gifted writer and storyteller, that she was a skilled and engaging recipe writer – she was of course a cookbook editor. I also knew she was charming, funny and generous – she was one of the first to give my blog a deep nod of approval. I had high hopes and hefty expectations. I was even a little nervous as I ripped open the grey bag from Viking press, smoothed the slightly matt cover, admired the boots and thought ’I’ve got a bag like that‘ and opened the first inky smelling page.

It’s delicious. It’s a beautiful and intelligently written account of a young woman’s life so far. A life that weaves and navigates its way between three cultures: German, American and Italian. A life in which this necessary but often baffling weaving is understood and managed through food, through nourishing others and being nourished. It’s evocative writing that seizes all your senses: taste, smell, touch, sound and sight, but writing that manages to remain as sharp as a redcurrant, pertinent and never cloying. I particularly liked reading about Luisa’s early childhood in West Berlin in the late 1970′s. Fascinating stuff, especially when Luisa teetered on the edge of something much darker. I’d like to learn more. I loved reading about Luisa’s Italian family and her food education, an enlightenment of sorts, a process that resonated strongly with me and my own experiences here in Italy. I’m itching to visit Berlin now, next spring I think. I’ll hire a bike and pedal my way around the city before finding myself some pickled herrings, potato salad and plum-cake.

Then there are the recipes, of which there are more than 44, fitting neatly and beautifully into the narrative. Which of course is the point, a memoir with food! Food and recipes that help you understand and taste a life. Terrific stuff. And so to the recipe I had no difficulty in choosing, an Italian one on page 82, one of the simplest, one of Luisa’s favorites and one of mine too: Tomato and Bread Soup or Pappa al pomodoro.

Pappa means , quite literally, mush and pomodoro, as you know, tomato. Mush of tomatoes. Stay with me. Pappa al pomodoro is classic Italian comfort food, born out of necessity, thrift and good taste. Excellent tomatoes are cooked with a fearless quantity of extra virgin olive oil,  plump garlic and a hefty pinch of salt until they are soft and pulpy. Cubed stale bread from a coarse country loaf is then added to the pan and everything cooked for another 10 minutes. This is moment Luisa captures so well, the moment when ‘When the bread cubes hit the silky tomatoes, they go all custardy and soft.’  The pan is then left to cool – as we know good things come to those who wait – and the flavors mellow. The Pappa al pomodoro is then served with grated ricotta salata and torn basil. Delicious and exquisite, a little like Luisa and her book which was released this week. Thank you for sending me a copy Vikings and tanti auguri to you Luisa.

Now I would happily eat pappa al pomodoro twice a week, every week, especially if every now and then it was topped with a lacy edged fried egg or quivering poached one. I can’t of course, eat it every week, what with it being such a strictly seasonal panful. Of course it’s this seasonality that makes Pappa al pomodoro even more of a pleasure, a treat.  Make it now while tomaotes are still in fine form.

Luca has never eaten so much lunch in his year-long life. Viva la pappa (thanks Jo.)

Tomato and bread soup Pappa al pomodoro

From My Berlin Kitchen by Luisa Weiss

Serves 2 hungry people. It could serve 4 at a push but who wants to push!

• 3 llbs / 1.5 kg fresh, ripe plum tomatoes
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 small onion minced
• 3 cloves garlic
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 cups cubed, crustless sourdough or peasant bread
• 1/2 cup grated ricotta salata
• 1 tbsp minced fresh basil leaves

Core and quarter the plum tomatoes. Place the tomatoes and their juices in a food processor and pulse a few times to chop them coarsely, you don’t want tomato puree.

Heat the oil in a 4-quart / 4 litre saucepan. Add the onion and garlic and sauté until soft but not browned, Add the tomatoes and their juices. season with salt and pepper, bring to a slow simmer, and cook for 45 minutes, covered, stirring from time to time.

When the soup has simmered for 45 minute, add the cubed bread and simmer for another 10 minutes, Check seasoning and discard the garlic.

Serve slightly cooled or at room temperature, with grated ricotta salata and minced basil strewn over each serving.

My notes.

I didn’t measure my oil but it was a mighty glug, I’d say about 5 tbsp. My tomatoes, a variety called Piccadilly had particularly thick skins so I peeled them. I don’t have a food processor so I chopped the tomatoes roughly by hand which seemed to work pretty well. I didn’t add onion. I left the garlic in the soup until I served it. My soup was fanatically thick by the end of cooking so I added a little water to loosen everything. I forgot the basil, there was something missing.

Use your loaf

For a woman like me, who struggles with bread management, Italy has been good. In part because bread is still bought daily from the local forno by weight: un mezzo filone, un quarto di pagnotta, un pezzo, un po, cosi, a way of shopping that, although no guarantee of perfect daily bread estimation, encourages bread thoughtfulness. But principally because if there is any old, stale bread in the kitchen, it’s not perceived as a problem, a doorstop or a guilty reminder of culinary mismanagement and wastefulness, but as an ingredient.

Old, stale bread is moistened back to life with a little cold water, squeezed dry, torn and then tossed with coarsely chopped tomatoes - fruity, fleshy and flavorsome ones, torn basil, maybe a little sliced red onion and then dressed with plenty of extra virgin olive oil, vinegar and salt. This marvelous muddle known as Panzanella is then left to sit – so the bread absorbs the tomato juice and dressing – before being served. For the Tuscan specialty Ribollita (which means re-boiled) a thick bean and vegetable soup prepared the day before is recooked, then served spooned over slices of stale bread – toasted or hardened in the oven – and blessed with extra virgin olive oil. In the case of Pappa al pomodoro (papa means mush, pomodoro, of course, tomato) ‘Mature’ bread is toasted and then cooked gently with garlic and excellent tomatoes in plenty of olive oil to make a gloriously good soup/mush. Every night in thousands of Italian kitchens stale bread is dampened with milk and then mixed with ground beef, parsley, parmesan and a grating of nutmeg to make Polpette (meatballs) to be simmered in rich tomato sauce.

And in Liguria, the narrow arc of a region on the coast below Piemonte, the Riviera di Fiori, stale bread is soaked in whole milk and then mixed with pounded walnuts, garlic, olive oil and freshly grated parmesan to make quite possibly my favourite (new) recipe this year, a glorious cream the colour of my Burbury trench coat, salsa di noci or walnut sauce.

I’d made walnut sauce before, I’ve posted about it in fact, but it didn’t involve stale bread and you see, stale bread is the key. As are good walnuts, the wrinkly lobes of the kitchen, the curious shaped King of nuts (the Queen of course is almond and the Prince, hazelnut but I digress.) Stale bread, from a coarse, country loaf and good walnuts, like those from Sorrento in Campania, creamy and with a wonderful oily, sweet, waxy texture but also slight bitterness and mild astringent nature. Curious nuts that look a little like something out of a specimen jar in a biology lab.

You can of course make your walnut sauce in a food processor. However, when it comes to this kind of sauce /pesto, the machine that has revolutionized our kitchens, lives and timing, can’t help but obliterates all the ingredients into a monotonous, textureless whole, the sauce equivalent of an airbrushed photo of, lets say Nicole Kidman: smooth as can be, but really rather boring.

I’d suggest using a pestle and mortar, or the plastic bag/ rolling-pin /think of someone immensely irritating technique to pound the walnuts into a coarse powder. Then use an immersion blender, for as briefly as possible, to blitz the pounded walnuts, milk sodden bread and garlic into a rough paste. Finally stir in the olive oil and freshly grated parmesan by hand with a wooden spoon. The combination of hand and machine produces a properly creamy sauce but one with real texture and personality. A sauce that is ready to be spooned into a jar.

And what good and surprising sauce. Well surprising to me at least! After a little reading it seems I am the last walnut lover to discover what the French (aillade), Italians, Turks (tarator) and Giorgians have known for centuries, the charm of walnuts, olive oil, garlic, usually bread and possibly cheese reduced a creamy, nutty, soft, intriguing and rounded sauce.

It may seem a little odd to smear bread on bread, but I like salsa di noci on hot toast or rounds of ciabatta (crostini) baked until crisp and golden in the oven. A great antipasti,  best served with a glass of chilled white wine or in the coming months a glass of full-bodied, room temperature red. Walnut sauce goes brilliantly with roast meat, particularly roast chicken, a sort of nutty Ligurian take on one of my favorites: English bread sauce. But best of all is salsa di noci with pasta, ideally Pansoti – which literally means pot-bellied – triangular wild herb ravioli from Liguria. But until we learn to make Pansoti, we shall eat our salsa di noci tossed with al dente spaghetti, tagliatelle or thick ribbons of fettucine cooked with some fine green beans.

I think it goes without saying we are talking about good bread here, a coarse, country-style loaf, one which ages decently and gracefully. Ideally the olive oil should be a light and delicately flavored variety. Last thing, I have given specific quantities, but they are merely guidelines, use your loaf, keeping in mind the sauce should be creamy and thick enough to stand a spoon up in, but still soft and spoonable.

Salsa di noci  Walnut sauce.

Makes a jar of sauce. More than enough to dress pasta for four and some left over for on toast the next day.

• 80 g of crustless, coarse country bread
• 200 ml whole milk (plus a little extra to loosen sauce if necessary)
• 150 g shelled walnuts
• 1 clove of garlic
• 40 g grated parmesan
• 5 – 7 tablespoons light extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper

In a small pan warm the milk gently until it is tepid and then remove it from the heat. Tear the bread into smallish pieces and add it to the pan. Leave to soak for 10 minutes.

In a pestle and mortar crush the walnuts. Peel the garlic and crush it with the back of a knife.

Tip the crushed walnuts, milk sodden bread and garlic into a bowl. Using an immersion/stick blender blitz everything into a thick coarse cream.

Add the olive oil and gated parmesan to the bowl and then – using a wooden spoon – beat the mixture firmly. Taste and season to taste with salt and freshly grated black pepper.

With pasta and green beans

For four people as a main course, I’d suggest 500 g of pasta  (spaghetti, tagliatelle or fettuccine) and 300 g of fine green beans. Bring a large pan of well salted water to the boil. Add the beans and pasta to the pan and cook until the pasta is al dente. Meanwhile put roughly 3/4 of your jar of walnut sauce in a warm bowl and thin it slightly with a little of the pasta cooking water (use a ladle to scoop some out while the pasta is cooking). Drain the pasta and beans, saving a little more of the cooking water. Mix the pasta and beans with the walnut sauce, adding a little more cooking water if you feel it need loosening even more. Divide between four warm bowls and serve with more freshly grated parmesan and a glass of Pigato.

Testaccio

Testaccio, the 20th rione (district) of Rome, is shaped like a large wedge of cheese, Via Marmorata and Viale di Campo boario being the two cut sides and the Tevere river the sweeping curve. Tucked between L’Aventino, the river and the Aurelian city wall, Testaccio is home to an ancient hill made of broken terra-cotta, the single arch of an aqueduct rising forlornly before a modern tenement block, a pyramid, a secret garden, a bold cooking style named Quinto Quarto and the best places to eat it, an abandoned slaughterhouse, a thriving market and – respectful hush – the A.S.Roma supporters club. It’s an area old in history but defiantly young in spirit and still dominated by Romans rather than tourists, particularly those in search of good food. Testaccio has also been my adopted home for nearly eight years.

In much the same way that I was an accidental tourist in Italy and a consequential one in Rome, I stumbled upon life in Testaccio. I was living on the other side of the city in an odd, stale flat that smelt of damp blankets on a noisy and charmless street near my language school in piazza Bologna. Of course I wasn’t going to stay in Rome, but while I did, I fancied myself living simply and pretentiously, throwing basil and writing poetry in a room in a faded and intriguing palazzo in the Ghetto or an exquisite vine flanked one half way up one of Monti’s cobbled backsteets.

It was my oldest friend and curious architect Joanna who led me to Testaccio. During her visit, she was as eager for us to visit Testaccio’s abandoned slaughterhouse, austere futurist post office, iron and glass food market and the courtyards and stairwells of its late 18th century tenement blocks as she was to visit the Renaissance fountains, Corinthian columns, domes, frescos, and palaces of the Eternal City. I was reluctant.

But not for Long. Testaccio covered market was closing, but through the gaps in the corrugated iron hatches, and despite the half-light within, it was clear why most people agreed that this was the city’s best and most authentic market. The large, square tenement blocks and the rabble of shops occupying their ground floors hummed with life, a fierce sense of community and a robust, workaday attitude I hadn’t sensed in other parts of the city. The litter strewn ruins on the bank of the river below were, on closer examination, Ancient Rome’s dock and warehouses for wine, oil, grain. The scruffy, disconcerting mound looming forlornly above Testaccio turned out to be composed entirely of broken terracotta amphorae – accumulated and meticulously stacked for nearly 500 years – from the Roman Republic. The numerous bars and jaded, cavernous trattoria filled with voracious Roman families seemed straight from a Fellini film. Backstreets were punctuated with metal workshops, artists studios, sleeping nightclubs and vacant shops filled with plastic tables at which longtime Testaccini were playing cards. As Joanna urged me to enter yet another – clearly private – courtyard to take pictures of another ingenious stairwell, I decided: this is where I want to live.

‘Vagare e mangiare come un Napolitano‘ a man in Naples once told me. ‘Wander and eat like a Neapolitan.’ Sound advice and indeed the best way to experience Naples! Or Palermo or Bari or Leece, anywhere for that matter! Wander and eat like a local is advice I swallowed greedily and followed needily and nowhere more so than Rome, especially in Testaccio.

Of course I’m not going to tell you where to wander, that would defeat the object and the happy adventure that is wandering. I will however remind you of the shape of Testaccio, the wedge! You can’t walk all the way round, but with a little weaving and a map (even wanderers need a map) you can get a sense of the lay of the land. The same with the mound, the ancient one with rather temporary looking restaurants and nightclubs built into it. It’s disconcertingly scruffy at first glance, but wander a little more and look carefully. It’s true also for the Mattatoio, the abandoned slaughterhouse, a vast sprawling complex, the bloody gut of Testaccio from the 1890′s until the early 1970′s, now part modern art gallery, part music school, part fair trade supermarket, part wasteland. It’s a disturbing and marvelous place that makes for quite extraordinary wandering, be bold. Walk past the futurist post office on Via Marmorata and into Via Caio Cestio, walk through the gate to discover the epitome of a secret garden. But most importantly wander the streets of Testaccio, block after block - in the morning if you can – Via Evangelista Torricelli, Via Galvani, Via Branca and Via Mastro Giorgio.

And eat.

Breakfast at Cafe Barberini, Via Marmorata 45.  Or the vast, unapologetically Roman, pleasingly chaotic Linari, Via Nicola Zabaglia 9. Head to the cash desk first and get a receipt for your order before lining up at the bar. A 10 cent coin placed strategically on the receipt should help catch the waiters eye. ‘Cappuccino e cornetto simplice’ is my breakfast of choice.

To market. The market has moved, which is extremely sad and Testaccio will never be the same again. If you’re coming to Rome in the next couple of weeks you may well see them pulling down the old structure to make way for a new piazza. However visit the very new, very white market between Via Galvani and Via Allessandro Volta. The structure may be new but the stall holders with their glorious greens, fine fruit and marvelous meat are familiar. Giancarlo at Stall 32 for fresh produce and Lina and Enzo at stall 87 for pancetta and mozzarella di Bufala.

My Lunch. Figs and tomatoes from Giancarlo at Testaccio market, prosciutto di San Daniele and Olive nere al forno from Volpetti, lariano bread from Passi,  Mozzaralla di bufala from Lina and Enzo at Testaccio market.

Should you feel the need for something mid morning! May I suggest a thin slice of Pizza bianca brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with salt or maybe piece of scrocchiarella (a very thin, very crisp, wavy flatbread) from the bakery Panificio Passi, via Mastro Giorgio 87. Or a small trapizzino – which is pouch of pizza bianca filled with a Roman speciality such as pollo alla Romana (chicken with red peppers) Lingua con salsa verde (tongue with green sauce) or Coda alla vaccinara (oxtail, roman style) from oo100, Via Giovanni Branca 88. Alternatively, maybe you’d like a soft almond biscuit or three and a gaze at the cassata in Sicilia e duci, Via Marmorata 87/89.

Food shops. Peer into the back of Gatti – Pasta all’uovo, via Branca 15 and watch Massimo Venturini and his girls prepare fresh egg pasta: Tonnarelli, fettuccine, ravioli, Agnolotti. The enoteca Palombi, Piazza testaccio 38-41 is a cavernous and handsome wine and beer shop. Beer by the bottle and wine by the glass are also served – with cheese and salami if you so wish – at one of the tables inside, or outside on the pavement terrace.

And then there is Volpetti, via Marmorata 47, a gloriously old-fashioned, beautifully appointed gastronomia, maybe Rome’s finest, run elegantly and shrewdly by two brother Emilio and Claudio Volpetti and their numerous and knowledgeable white-coated assistants ranked behind the counter. A modest sized (not priced) shop, standing in Volpetti feels like being in the midst of the most exquisite but slightly hallucinogenic food jigsaw as floor to ceiling shelves, the ceiling itself and long glass counter are impossibly but impeccably crowded with oils, vinegars, truffles, olives, capers, tuna, porcini, wine, preserves, chocolate, 150 types of cheese and 150 types of salami and prosciutto. If you are renting a flat or fancy eating in park, shopping for lunch in Volpetti is recommended. The assistants can be very persistent, so a firm ‘Basta, Grazie‘ (which means ‘Enough/that’s all thank you’) is useful.

If you want to sit down for lunch – but not for too long – there is Volpetti più Via Allesandro Volta 8, the somewhat spartan and functional but excellent Tavola Calda /pizza al taglio of the Volpetti Food emporium. I am extremely devoted to Volpetti più, particularly the pizza margherita, vegetable lasagna, pomodoro col riso and the braised rabbit. If there is a large bowl of pears in red wine syrup have one.

If a sit down lunch is in order, then I have three suggestions. But first, I should mention the style of cooking – called Quinto Quarto – particular to Testaccio. A style of cooking that was created by the slaughterhouse workers in the early 19th century. Quinto Quarto means fifth quarter and refers to the parts of the animal: the tail, the organs, the nerves, the intestines (the stuff of uneasy, squirms and sniggers) that couldn’t be sold. Worker’s pay was supplemented with this Quinto Quarto which they then took home to their wives who in turn transformed these undesirable and poor cuts of meat – the offal – into bold, delectable and delicious dishes. Cast your preconceptions aside and be as bold as a plate of my favorite Roman dish Coda Alla Vaccinara (oxtail stew.) There are, of course, numerous Roman dishes which are not offal based.

I’d also like mention the five noted Roman pasta dishes. All three places I am going to suggest for lunch – and dinner – are pastmasters . Cacio e pepe – pecorino romano and black pepper. Alla Gricia – pecorino romano with guanciale or pancetta. All’amatriciana – pecorino romano, guanciale or pancetta, tomatoes, white wine. Arrabbiata – pecorino romano, guanciale or pancetta, chilli, fresh tomatoes. Carbonara – pecorino romano, eggs, parmesan, guanciale or pancetta.

But lunch Where?

Perilli, Via Marmorata 59. Luca had his first taste of Rigatoni alla carbonara at Perilli last Sunday. It was an important and messy moment for Luca. It was also important for his Dad, Giampiero, who ate carbonara with his father at Perilli when he was a boy. Perilli does indeed feel a little like being in a Fellini Film, cavernous, exciting, perennially packed, with its cummerbunded waiters, starched white cloths, ancient and incessant kitchen buzzer, frosted windows and slightly surreal wall murals. The food is traditional and excellent especially the carbonara, amatriciana, the sweetbreads (note Ben Roddy), abbacchio (lamb) and the Tiramisu. I adore Perilli and wish I had the money to be a real regular. If you can, get a Roman to book you a table.

Agustarello, Via Giovanni Branca 98.  I began my education in Roman food in the small, spartan trattoria Agustarello. It doesn’t look like a particularly promising address, but rest assured it is. If you pass in the morning and the frosted glass door is open, you might catch a glimpse of Alessandro in his kitchen stirring a vast pot. The food is robust and stoutly Roman:  amatriciana, cacio e pepe, artichokes, coratella and coda alla Vaccinara (oxtail stew) are all superb. If you happen to go during fresh broad bean season ask to be brought some fave fresche along with some salty, piquant pecorino romano as a starter. Booking is advised.

Flavio al valavevodetto, Via di Monte Testaccio 97.  Flavio is built into Monte Testaccio, the ancient mound of broken terra-cotta you will have probably wandered around before Lunch. The back wall of both dining rooms have glass panels through which you can marvel at the heart of the mound, the intricately stacked pieces of ancient amphorae. The food is just excellent, fiercely Roman but with a certain youth and vigour about it, a little like Testaccio itself really. Begin with the Mozzarella di Bufala or – in season – carciofi alla Giudia (deep-fried artichokes Jewish style). Follow with a pretty perfectly executed plate of cacio e pepe or carbonara. For secondi (in which case I’d share a pasta) Cotolette d’abbacchio panate e fritte (breaded lamb cutlets) or  Maialino al forno (oven roasted pork). To finish (you off) Tiramisu’ al bicchiere. Flavio is – deservedly – very very popular so book ahead.

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Basta! Done! and quite frankly I think we both deserve a drink after that! Make mine a large Campari bitter on ice. And I still haven’t talked about where to eat Roman pizza cooked in a wood oven, pasta e ceci, where to have an aperitivo, what to have for an aperitivo, where to have your dry cleaning done, where to go and listen to a little night music, where to eat Gelato. Next time! Which won’t be for a while I promise. Meanwhile I hope you will tuck this post away until the time is right.

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Back next week with a recipe that involves walnuts. I’ve already posted a picture on FaceBook for those of you who do. Meanwhile Luca and I are off for a gelato and then a wander on the hill above Testaccio, Aventino! Now there’s a part of Rome I’d like to tell you about….