The River Café was still garnering dizzying praise. Everyone was roasting vegetables and dreaming about moving to Italy. Tuscany had overtaken Provence as the idyll and serious home cooks were trying to produce silky sheets of pasta and getting used to the grassy heat of Tuscan olive oil.
I was careful not to fall into the trap of making Italy a fantasy place, but I did love the food.With no time to deliberate over books, I packed only Anna Del Conte’s Secrets from an Italian Kitchen.
The list of what I hoped to make – Sardinian peppers, stuffed tomatoes, ricotta and basil tart, peperonata – was scribbled on the last page.
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