Lottie Lomme
How do you pick a chicken? How do you stuff game meat? How do you fillet sardines? Not really things that I Sophia Loren saw do it, but admittedly: she is not faint. For the classic dishes of Italian cuisine, La Loren is not afraid to get her hands dirty. Actually, Cooking con amore, the Sophia Loren cookbook, is above all simple cuisine, the simple kitchen. Not too many ingredients, no complicated actions in the kitchen. But it must be tasty.
70s
The book was published in Italy in the 70s and has now been reissued in the Netherlands. In a hip, colorful design, divided into about ten chapters. Antipasti, pasta, homemade pasta, rice, soup, pizza, corn (polenta), fish, meat, game and poultry, eggs and vegetables, desserts and sweets. Very handy. Each chapter concludes with a personal piece from Loren about her experiences with cooking and eating. How she does her best to please her friends and guests. That love goes through the stomach. All this is accompanied by beautiful 70s photos of Loren posing in long soup dresses in orange, yellow and 70s green in front of a huge platter of cold meat, jelly and deviled eggs.
Those photos might suggest that the dishes are dated, but that's not true after all. She uses pure ingredients and while macaroni with cheese was introduced in the Netherlands in the 70s, the Italians were busy with much tastier things in the 70s. The Italian cuisine of the past shows something that the Dutch are now trying to achieve: good food with simple ingredients and actions in the kitchen. Back to basics.
One take a sheep
Sometimes she deviates from that. I am a novice home cook who gets her ingredients from the grocery store. But now in the chapters 'fish', 'meat' and 'game and poultry' I am sent to the butcher and fishmonger. You must be curious enough to want to gut your duck at home, stuff it, and use the roasting pan. I think: if you are a carnivore, eat anything, don't be afraid, be a man and be willing to learn this. So: I do have respect for Sophia. There are dishes in the book with capon (a neutered rooster), duck, mutton, lamb, pork knuckle and pheasant and more. I then envision Sophia throwing a sheep over her back, on her way home to cook for friends. But that is of course unlikely. It is more likely that she was in the store and that a handsome male Italian offered to carry the sheep home for her. And that Sophia had walked to the butcher in heels, knowing that a man would surely present himself for her sheep.
To attempt!
I chose the sardines first a beccafico. Sardines are nice and cheap on the market and you can have them filleted so I don't have to let all those entrails go through my fingers. I'm a bit of a wimp. I've done it myself once, but it made me a little nauseous. You have to fill those sardines (including parsley from the Albert Heijn plant, which I was actually able to harvest) and bake. Tasty yet new and simple! I also made the classic caponata for which you need to fry eggplant. The next dish I want to try is the sedano ripieno, translated as 'celery boats'. I've already read about it and now I can get to work! Delicious!
salary slip
It is funny that it regularly says: shave some white truffle over it. Yes yes, Loren, I think. I haven't received my pay slip yet! But she often does that over a simple dish prepared with cheap ingredients. So she's not a real snob either. No, Koken con amore is really a sympathetic book. And a nice edition of this accessible recipe book for the real Italian kitchen.
Cooking con amore
by: Sophia Loren
276 pages
€ 19,99
Luitingh-Sijthoff, 2015
ISBN 9789024567508
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