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It would be impossible to write a story set in Italy and not feature food; at least, I’ve never managed it. All 15 of my novels have made their readers hungry. Food is about so much more than nourishment. It is pleasure and memory. It is how we remember those we’ve lost and show people that we love them. It is what we offer in good times and bad. In some of my books, food is almost another character, in others, a tool of seduction or a source of comfort.
For something so important, Italian cooking is actually very simple, based around good ingredients from this sun-drenched land. Most my memories of childhood summers in Italy are of sitting at a table – in a farmhouse kitchen, beneath a grapevine-covered pergola, on the beach – sharing food with other people.
Here are five signature dishes from five of my novels:
The Italian Wedding: Melanzane alla parmigiana
My Neapolitan father cooks this dish of sliced fried eggplant blanketed with tomato sauce and melting cheese. His version is possibly the unhealthiest thing you can do to a vegetable.
The Italian Wedding is partly the story of how my parents met in the late 1950s, which was the dolce vita (sweet life) era in Rome. My mother had hitchhiked there from England, my father was doing his military service and was ridiculously handsome.
Beppi, the patriarch of the novel is totally my father. When he read the book, he didn’t recognise himself at all, although, of course, my mother did, which she thought was hilarious. They’re both in their late 80s now and my father still cooks his melanzane for her and anyone else who appears at mealtimes. If you invite me for dinner, it’s the dish that I’ll bring with me (see recipe below).
The Food of Love Cookery School: Chicken with chocolate
The most fun I ever had researching a novel was the week I spent at the Love Sicily cooking school in Modica, a baroque town in the southeast of the island, famous for its chocolate. I learned to make this dish which is not as rich as it sounds. The chicken is marinated in Prosecco, spiced with chilli and fennel, and has the classic Sicilian agrodolce – sweet/sour – flavour (see recipe below).
In May, I returned to Love Sicily, hosting a tour group of 12 readers, and my friend Katia Amore demonstrated this dish, then we got to enjoy it. My first-ever Food of Love tour was as much fun as the original research, and really brought the novel alive – the flavours, the places, the culture, the people. It was so great experiencing that with a bunch of foodie book lovers that I’m going to do the whole thing again next year. And quite possibly the one after.
A Year at Hotel Gondola: Bigoli in salsa
Venetian food is, like the place itself, very different. It’s mostly based on seafood, caught in the shallow lagoon that the city is built on and vegetables grown on its islands. I spent time in Venice on my own researching this novel and ate in cicchetti bars like the locals. There, you might nibble on a few crostini or meatballs and enjoy an ombra – a small glass of wine – while standing at a counter. Eventually I needed something more robust and this is what I chose. It’s an oily, salty pasta dish made with thick wholewheat spaghetti, onions plus anchovies or sardines.
The character in this novel, Kat Black, is a food writer who is spending time in Venice researching a book, and bigoli in salsa is one of the things she falls in love with while she’s there.
Under Italian Skies: Timballo
I would never dream of making timballo and have never met anyone I could persuade to cook one for me. It is a baked dish, like a large pie or savoury cake, and while recipes vary from region to region, it generally involves meats, cheese, vegetables, pasta and pastry, all layered into a mould. Timballo is not a week-night dinner, it’s a celebration.
In this novel, the main character, Stella, is having a midlife gap year. A house swap has taken her to southern Italy where she falls into the clutches of the cunning Francesca Russo who tricks her into cooking timballo and paying for the pleasure.
Marry Me in Italy: Flat ribbons of pasta with a silky tomato sauce
My latest novel features new characters and a fresh story but is set in a familiar place. The fictional hill town of Montenello, where they sold off houses for one euro, has appeared in two earlier books, A Dream of Italy and To Italy, With Love.
In each of these stories, sooner or later people find themselves eating in a little trattoria in the main piazza. Run by brusque but kind Assunta, it is one of those places where there isn’t a menu, you’re served whatever has been cooked, and very often there is a gluey, rich ragu simmering on the stove.
In Marry Me in Italy, Ana has driven to Montenello, her car packed with her belongings, to start a new life. Skye is there because she’s won a competition that she didn’t want to enter. I’m not going to give away what happens next but I promise they will eat well.
Marry Me in Italy by Nicky Pellegrino (Hachette, $37.99) is out now. To find out about any future Food of Love tours sign up to Nicky’s newsletter on the Tours page of her website www.nickypellegrino.com
Beppi’s recipe for Melanzane alla Parmigiana
Ingredients
2 aubergines
1 onion
1 jar of tomato passata
2 eggs
plain flour
salt
pepper
basil
lots of grated parmesan
a little grated mozzarella
olive oil
sunflower oil
This is my way of doing it. The best way. First you cut the eggplants into rounds - not too thick but not too thin. Salt them and leave in a colander to drain for an hour. Then wash off the salt with cold water and pat dry with a clean cloth.
Now make the Napolitano sauce. Finely chop an onion, fry in olive oil and then pour on the jar of tomato passata. Add basil, a little salt and pepper and then simmer the sauce for 20 minutes. Now your kitchen is smelling wonderful, eh?
Next beat two eggs with a little salt and pepper. Dip both sides of each eggplant round first in some plain flour, then in the beaten egg and shallow fry in vegetable oil until golden brown. Oh, and don’t be mean with the oil. Pour it from the bottle properly – don’t just dribble it in.
Layer the fried eggplant in a shallow oven dish – four layers maximum – and cover each layer with some Napolitano sauce and plenty of grated parmigiano. Sprinkle mozzarella on the top and bake for 20 minutes at about 150⁰C.
Chicken with chocolate
6 chicken thighs
500ml Prosecco or white wine
1-2 medium onions
1 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
30g grated dark chocolate
2 cloves
3 tsp fennel seeds
4 tbsp white wine vinegar
Salt
Chilli (as much or as little as you like)
Marinate the chicken in Prosecco overnight.
Grind the fennel seeds and the cloves together with the chocolate using a pestle and mortar and set aside.
Chop the onion and soften in a large pan with olive oil, then turn the heat up and add the chicken. Keep turning as it fries until evenly golden brown.
Add the mixture of chocolate, fennel seeds and cloves, the sugar, the chilli and stir in with the spoons of vinegar. Lower the heat, cover the pan and let it simmer for 30-40 minutes. If it gets too dry add a splash more Prosecco.
(With thanks to Katia Amore from Love Sicily)
