food & Drink
All photos from Gregg’s Italian Family Cookbook by Gregg & Anna Wallace, priced £20. Available now,
Wallace’s love affair with Italian cuisine began when he made a series that saw him travel through the country with the late Charlie Hicks, and first sat down to a simple plate of orecchiette (ear-shapped pasta) in Puglia. “I was just like, ‘Wow, food shouldn’t taste this good’,” he recalls. “From that point on, I’ve been completely and utterly in love with the food of Italy. “I love that it’s relatively simple, and that it comes out of necessity, most of it, feeding big families on very little - it’s just so ridiculously clever.” Big, everyday family feasts, everyone gathered in the kitchen, was a central part of Anna’s upbringing, spending school holidays in her nonna’s house in Roma, sucking the heads of prawns as a toddler and learning how to cook. “Te whole family cooks, and I’m proud of this, they recognise my Anna as the best cook - she used to come home from school and cook dinner for her parents,” Wallace says. “She’s a far better cook than me.” Teir cookbook is a collection of easy-to-make Italian classics -”I don’t want to innovate, most are incredibly simple, and that’s the point” - and you’ll likely recognise nearly all of the dishes. Tink pizza bianca, grilled sardines and salsa di pomodoro - recipes that don’t require many steps or ingredients. A few you might never have tried, like gnocchi alla romana, made from semolina instead of potato, or ribollita (Tuscan bread
“IN ITALIAN HOMES, IT’S AS
MUCH ABOUT THE ACT OF PREPARING A MEAL AS IT IS EATING IT.”
soup), and some require a bit more time and effort, like Rina’s porchetta (Roman roast pork belly). Wallace says he’s learned a lot from Rina. “I love bagna cauda [a sauce made from anchovies and garlic] but it kept splitting so I phoned my mate Michel Roux Jr. at the Gavroche and he said, ‘Te oil is too hot’. So I kept trying and it kept splitting. Anna’s mum came along and put a spoon of milk in it, and it just emulsified beautifully,” he says, laughing. “Michel Roux nil, Reni Sterpini one! “Tey’ve taught me how to make pizza dough - I can’t roll it round though, mine still looks like a map of Africa,” he adds. “Tey’ve taught me how to make fresh pasta in minutes. Anna’s taught me better fish cooking, she’s taught me better meat cooking, she’s taught me everything. “And her dad? I’ve never seen anybody cook squid like that on the barbecue, and his rabbit is off the scale. Tat man just barbecues, he wasn’t brought up with a stove.” In Italian homes, it’s as much about the act of preparing a meal as it is eating it. “Her family have taught me
to just slow down,” says Wallace. “It’s either you’re properly going to sit down and prepare and eat lunch, or you’re not going to bother at all. It’s not a labour to prepare meals for people.” You may imagine that simple Italian dishes are delicious because the ingredients are better or fresher, but Wallace says that’s a common misconception. “In Italy, they don’t have fresh tomatoes in winter, they make passata, they use tins of tomatoes. “What you need to do is start relying on tinned tomatoes, vegetables in oil, tinned tuna; all of these things are good and they’re cheap and they’re fine. If you’ve got tins of tomatoes, tins of fish in brine or oil and you’ve got flour - then you’ve got hundreds of dishes!” What about puddings then? Well, that’s one thing Wallace still thinks the British do better - although, he adds: “Anna’s coffee panna cotta is a thing of absolute beauty.” >>
Anna’s prawns with chilli and garlic.
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