I found Italian Food in a charity shop when I was 19, some time after my first trip to Italy, when I knew nothing of the art of cookery and was desperate to relive the amazing culinary world I'd briefly inhabited. A lifesaver really. The Italian culinary landscape must have changed considerably since then (published 1954) and I suspect even at the time there were inaccuracies and omissions. Nonetheless loads of valuable information, plus a fascinating insight into both post-war Italy and Britain.

Bizarrely I've never read any of her other books. At some point I must have stopped looking at the cookery book sections of charity shops. Around the same period I found a copy of Gourmet's French Cookbook by Louis Diat which is an absolute beauty: some wonderful recipes plus anecdotes from his upbringing in France and wise advice.

Best salad I ever ate was in Jersey, summer of 20-something or other, just after my now twice-married daughter had taken her GCSEs.  A while ago, then.  We'd eaten at the French restaurant on the Saturday evening, then came across this back street bistro.  A French woman did the cooking with her Scots boyfriend waiting on.  The salad - not my usual thing - had pine nuts and was so good I ordered it each time I went in.  The owner had shocked her father by telling him she was moving to England.  "What do you want to go and cook for those people for?  They only eat boiled beef and carrots".  Made me laugh.  The owner of the restaurant and his chef ate their lunch in there.  A pretty good recommendation I should have thought.

Yuca, the lady's thing about cheese, crusty bread, wine, fruit and perhaps coffee is sound.  Satisfying lunchtime fare.  Not too much wine perhaps, unless you can take a siesta.

Elizabeth David.  The English don't really go in for lunch.  They don't really go in for dinner.  They go in for 'cook-in sauces', lining up for greasy pizza and garlic bread on a weekend evening, overdoing their vegetables in the time-honoured tradition, else thinking how amazing a 'carvery' is.  One of our local pubs even specifies the type of custard they serve so the OAPs can breathe a collective sigh of relief. 
One of my favourite eating-places remains 'Crust' in Lincoln, where Victor is a kind of morose Fawlty figure and his nephew will tell you all about toadstools on Venus or the latest conspiracy theory whilst serving up.  The food, however, is good and cheap.  An early discovery of my elder daughter when her first husband was working for a bank in that rather run-down cathedral city.

I think her emphasis was more on France in that particular instance.

Perhaps.  I've certainly eaten fair-sized lunches in Montmartre.  The waitress brought me a huge basket of bread to myself.  When I had eaten it she brought me another.  Contrast that to England, where half a dozen slices of bread and a single pat of butter are set out between several people or - very likely - the bread has to be requested.  In a so-called 'bistro', too. 
A French girl told me years ago that French family eating is a good deal more straightforward than the English seem to think.  Often soup, salad, a meat course accompanied by a sauce, cheese and fruit, wine and coffee.  And bread.  Deighton claimed one would rarely, if ever, be invited into a French home at mealtime.  Don't know if this is true or not.  Do you remember the so-called 'Bistro Pierre' in Leicester?  Also branches in Derby and Nottingham.  Best avoided in my experience.  Staff are generally English and show it. 
Best lunchtime experience if on the move in France is one of their baguettes, stuffed with ham, cheese and salad.  Inexpensive.

Not sure about a basement.  I've only been twice, years ago, and that was twice too many.  Very self-important staff, imagining it was a top Parisian nosh-place or something rather than a poncing, pretentious craphole.  'Airport food' is how the (French) waiter up at King Street described it.  The Derby branch is at least in a nice building.  Nothing else to recommend it, though.  Not one of these places is a genuine bistro.  I've also been to a place called 'Le Mistral', which is worse.  It serves English beer - which is fine in the pub but not in a supposed 'continental' restaurant.  I want Ricard, Perrier, a glass of wine.  Is that too much to ask?  England, all too often, cannot do these things properly.  Italian places can also be very hit and miss, including serving up microwaved shit.

I think the notion of the big family lunch, mamma cooking all morning for three generations to get together for a three hour blow-out between 1 and 4, well that has largely disappeared  in Italy apart from in quieter, more traditional rural areas and further south. Most Italians work (or did pre-pandemic) in offices away from home and have a panino and some classy mineral water (Ferrarelle anyone? The Vichy Catalan of Italy). Almost universally however in virtually all contexts they will prioritise good food and shun inferior offerings. Many factories and larger offices have excellent dining rooms where top quality food is freshy prepared each day for the workers. The food on offer at motorway service stations is very good. When, where and how to eat is a big deal, light years away from Blighty. We have great food everywhere now in London, but I still think a general understanding, appreciation and refinement around food is lacking. And it's the same for clothes - great stuff everywhere but a real ignorance about where it comes from, what it means, and how to wear it.

I agree with both of you.  I remember many years ago sharing a house with an English girl, and her amusement and incredulity at my spending a long time in the k¡tchen to cook something.

Eat whatever and get drinking - so often the British way.

Last edited by Yuca (2021-10-10 09:04:01)

Deighton has wise words on the use of salt.  It's overused.  I may sprinkle a small amount on chips but am slightly put out to have relatives shower it liberally all over my cooking.
Regarding salad, in France a couple of lettuce leaves are often eaten between the main course and the cheese.  Nothing more apparently.  I suppose a bistro in England (like many an ethnic restaurant) bends and shapes its offerings towards those it's catering for.  So, mint sauce on lamb in that great place (if it's still going) near Regents Park zoo, a trendy, sticky rocket-based mix with my lobster bisque platter in Nottingham.  The English in Rome, some years back: 'They do a great steak and chips and pint of lager here'.  Then the fucker leaned on the back of my chair while they all began snapping photographs of one another.  Why didn't they stay in Weston-Super-Mare or Clacton?

On salt : recently starting salting courgettes and aubergines before cooking. Slice thinly, put in a bowl, sprinkle some Saxa over the top (not too much, and sea salt not appropriate here). After half an hour they have expelled masses of water, especially courgettes, and the flavour much improved. Thank you Ottolenghi.

I read, to my amusement, that Marinetti and his followers suggested the abolition of pasta, substituting it instead with what sounds remarkably like nouvelle cuisine (i.e. preposterous, barely edible crap at fancy prices).  Still, I have noticed certains types of English treating pasta almost as a substitute for the former 'Chips With Everything' mentality (apologies to Wesker).  Just take some pasta and pour a reddish chemical sauce over it.  Or the 'Everything-But-The-Giant vibrator-Sink' approach (back to Wesker) rather than spending a little time and effort studying how to make a sauce - like preparing the pork the day before the beef, and not leaving out the finely-grated carrot.  And Parmesan I find absolutely essential.