Firstly, why Puglia?
My reasoning was very poor, I have to say. I saw an article about a town in Puglia that was suffering from very bad depopulation and they were paying people to move there. And Puglia was then beginning to get much more noticed. I think in the past four years, it's become quite a hotspot holiday. I went to visit the town, it wasn't the right place, but I just decided, "yep, I like Puglia, coming back here". And that was it.
Was there a particular meal that sparked your interest in Italy?
When I first came to Italy, I was backpacking. This was a long time ago, when I was younger, and we got off a train in the early morning. We went into a cafe near the station in Calabria and the owner came in and brought us some figs that he just picked off the tree that were warm from the early morning sunshine. Now, I get figs all through the season here. But those figs I remember as being, kind of epic, because they were so perfect and so full of flavour. There's also the generosity of people in the South of Italy. This guy just brought them in for us and it was such a sweet thing to do.
Another memorable meal I had eons ago was, again, in Calabria, in a little town up in the hills. We went to stay there and thought the place we were staying was a bit iffy. So when he offered us dinner, we said we'll go off and he just kind of smiled. We went off and realised there was nowhere open to eat in the whole of the town except for his place. So we called back there, rather sheepishly, and just had an epic meal with everything made by his mother and mushroom pasta with mushrooms he picked himself. You should never judge a book by its cover, cliché. But it's true.
Do you have a favourite part of Pugliese food?
They like a lot of bitter greens, and those are fantastic. I love green vegetables. The most famous is the Cime di Rapa. It's everybody's cheap dinner, 'Pasta with Cime di Rapa'. And now in the UK, it's being grown a little bit and sold in frightfully chi-chi green-grocers and upmarket delis at vast prices, which would have Italians just crease up with laughter because here it's so everyday, every class, everybody eats it. I really like that note of bitterness.
I also admire that Puglia was historically, and still to an extent, a very, very poor area of Italy. I mean, really massively poor. The food is often very simple and there's not a huge palette of flavourings and spices and things like that, but people use what they've got very, very well. It's a very economical way of cooking. Nothing goes to waste. Every last scrap of stale bread is used up and I love the ingenuity and that creativity that has come out of centuries of not having very much to eat. My God, they did the best they could with it and it's pretty impressive.
There's a few unwritten rules that accompany Italian cooking, such as leaving cheese out of seafood. Are there any you've learned of since moving to Puglia?
Pugliese break the one about fish and seafood all the time. It's not as written in stone. There's a well-known Pugliese dish with seafood and cheese, called simply Tiella Pugliese, made with potatoes, rice, and mussels. It's an oven-baked gratin with cheese in it as well, and it's so gorgeous. There's little conventions, rather than rules. People are quite conservative about food here and you don't put certain things with certain things because you know better than that.
One thing you almost never see here, is anybody drunk. They love to sit down and eat and drink. They enjoy wine, but they don't drink for the sake of drinking. Drink is usually accompanied by food, and it's about conviviality, and that's something that I love.
Another habit I really love is that when you go to the market or to the greengrocers to buy fruit and veg, they nearly always give you a big, a bunch of parsley as well for free, which I think is very charming. It's quite a clever habit, because you think, "oh fine, I'll be nice, I'll go back again".
Are there any that you disagree with?
They say certain types of pasta are very good for going with certain types of sources. I was told that cavatelli is absolutely the right type of pasta to go with a fish and tomato ragout. Why should it be any better than any other one? I'm not totally convinced.
They don't like foreign food very much here. It's a shame. I have a lovely neighbour who I've learned a huge amount from. She's a real sort of classic, Pugliese cook. Once she was making focaccia and having people around. And I thought, "oh, what can I take?" I had some avocados, so I made some guacamole. Big mistake. She did try it, a tiny bit on the end of a teaspoon but made a terrible face. I think she just thought it was green slime. I actually thought it was really good guacamole, but no. You need to introduce things with stealth. Little by little.
I personally think you do whatever makes you happy, to be quite honest, and one shouldn't be too constrained by rules.
As the daughter of Jane Grigson, can you recall any moments from your childhood that inspired you to follow a career in food?
No, because I never thought I would go into it. I guess I was very lucky, very privileged. I had a upbringing where food was important and we had good food on the table all the time. And I just thought that's what you do, I'm afraid I just fell into food writing more by accident than by design.
My mother obviously was a huge inspiration in the way I wrote, and she shaped my attitude to food, so she was a huge influence in that sense. Food just always seemed to be an important part of life. Both my parents, but my mother in particular, gave me the idea that the concept of food is a part of your wider culture. And when you think about it, almost everything about our culture has come out of the need to eat and to survive. Without the culture and the intricacies of food, we wouldn't be sitting here talking, because that's what our whole world is built on. All our systems, however complex, they're all built on food, because it's such a basic human necessity. And such a basic human pleasure.
Having grown up in a household that revolved around food, are there any meals that you can remember from your childhood?
Oh yes, absolutely. A recipe my mum had in one of her books, English Food, and it's called a Sweetmeat Cake, but it's actually a tart with toasted hazelnuts and candy peel. Then, you make almost like a custard, but instead of using milk or cream, you use butter. I think it's an 18th century dish originally. It's a bit like pecan pie, but it's not, it has hazelnuts in it. Anyway, it's fabulous, and I love it. I've made it for French friends in France, and I made it the first year I came here. The 15th of August is a huge festival throughout Italy called the Ferragosta. It's sort of like a summer version of Christmas. No presents, but families all get together for a meal. I was invited to a Ferragosta feast, and I made a Sweetmeat Cake to bring, they all loved it, it's such a good dish. Bizarrely, it's not that well known in the UK and I think it's a great shame because everybody loves it.
Since your inaugural article, 50 Ways with Potatoes, you've embarked on a journey of success in cookery writing. Is there anything that stands out for you, from your career?
I did some work with the Fairtrade Foundation. That was really interesting seeing the everyday stuff that we take for granted, like coffee or spices, and learning about how people grow them, how the actual people do the real work at the base. How they've been treated historically, and how wrong it is that they get the least money out of all of it. Those projects were hugely inspiring and made me look at how people produce food and put more consideration into where our food comes from and how it reaches us, quite a lot of which isn't that great actually. So working with the Fairtrade Foundation was amazing.
But you know, there are so many, many highlights. I have been incredibly lucky. Basically I've loved being able to travel and learn about food together. There's nothing I like better. And now, coming here and beginning to be able to do it in a slightly different way, by actually staying in one place and exploring it.
What is one piece of advice that you would give to those who are beginners in the kitchen? Obviously, other than purchasing your book, The First Time Cook.
Get a knife sharpener and sharpen your knives regularly. Most people don't do that very often. You don't actually need to have expensive knives, just sharp ones. And the best way to do that? Just get a little handheld knife sharpener and sharpen your knives every time you use them. Chopping an onion with a blunt knife is a pain in the butt, whereas chopping with a sharp one is really easy.
Finally, what was your favourite part of filming Series Two of Sophie Grigson Slice of Italy?
Some friends of mine who live out in the countryside here, showed us how they make batches of tomato sauce to bottle for the winter. They're a great family, beautiful human beings, and they had a huge cauldron out on the edge of the olive grove, which is where they always do it. They do it every year, just kilos of tomatoes boiling up to make tomato sauce, and then they let the water drip off. They had a bamboo rack, which is a traditional drying rack, but then they put an old lace curtain over it, and that is what they drain all the water with before they mulch them all up into tomato sauce for the winter.
You then have to boil the bottles for a certain amount of time in boiling water. They do it all day. He has an old chair out in the olive grove. He sits there in his deck chair as the light's going, occasionally feeding another log into the fire to keep it all boiling.
It's something that probably fewer and fewer families do now. They're essentially making passata, but with their own tomato. And I hope it's a tradition that doesn't completely disappear because it's... It was just beautiful. It was absolutely beautiful and very simple.
It was, it was brilliant.
