I Love Food Recipes

How many people does it take to turn a frittata di pasta? Here, at the moment, two. We discuss (argue) about when exactly, and whether a pan lid or a plate is better for inverting, and which of us used a pan scrub on the nonstick pan. It wasn’t me. Lockdown has concentrated everything, reduced our stocks and patience. It has also concentrated the importance of leftovers, or, as a friend calls them, “leave-that-alone-don’t-eat-it-it-is-for-tomorrow’s-lunch”. With most frittate – potato, asparagus, onion, bottom-of-the-fridge – the ingredients are held together by the egg. With a frittata di pasta, it is the other way round: the egg is held by the pasta. That isn’t to say that the eggs in frittata di pasta aren’t glue – they are, adhering to the strands of spaghetti like mud in a bird’s nest, but without encasing the whole thing. This means that, instead of a heavy yellow frame, the edges are made by the curves of spaghetti which, like snags in a sweater, poke and stick out, toasting...

Saved by a woman in a grey coat with a tartan shopping trolley. Not that I hadn’t noticed the porcini I was about to buy were a bad lot. Even my amateur eyes could see that the worm holes were more craters than pin pricks, that the half-dozen specimens looked like they had been in a scrap. Yet again though, as is also my way in clothes shops and Italian perfumeries, I was trapped in a transaction; somehow indebted to the man and about to spend the best part of 20 euros on some dodgy mushrooms. The woman’s interception was impressive. Was I making soup? she asked, putting herself between me and the crate. “If so, a few of the coral capped ones and field mushrooms would do the job – just boost them with porcini secchi (dried porcini); even a handful of chestnuts.” At that she put her bag of chestnuts at the top of her trolley and headed to the butcher. Porcino means something reminiscent of a pig or piglet, perhaps after the bulbous stems, pale with five-o’clock shadow, which is o...