4 Questions 4 Tamasin Day-Lewis

At the beginning of February I wrote about Tamasin Day-Lewis's wonderful book, "Where Shall We Go for Dinner?" And now I'm eagerly awaiting an even newer work: a big fat compendium of her recipes -- 1,000 of them -- titled "All You Can Eat," due in May. To complete my personal Tamasin triathlon, she recently agreed to answer four questions. I could have asked her a thousand.

1. CE: Last year, I had a wonderful biking trip in Puglia including a delicious multi-course meal at the home of a man active in the Slow Food movement.

I know from "Where Shall We Go for Dinner?" that most of your culinary experiences in the region weren't nearly as happy. Was that one of your worst food trips?

TDL: No, the trip to Puglia was hellishly . . . more »

A Valentine for Food-lovers

I've collected Tamasin Day-Lewis's books ever since 1983 when I found "The Englishwoman's Kitchen" -- a slim little volume filled with extremely non-glitzy photographs of decidedly eclectic cooking spaces. I particularly love "The Art of the Tart" and "Tarts with Tops On" but treasure all her books -- not only for their splendid recipes but also for her impassioned and eloquent writing style. And then I got my hands on her latest.

Every once in a while I start to read a book and quickly realize it's a soup-for-dinner situation. Not because I discover a great soup recipe -- soup-for-dinner books usually aren't even cookbooks -- but because I am so engrossed in the reading that I abandon all possible household chores. Laundry remains unfolded, bills unpaid and the simplest possible dinner gets served. ("There has to be a container of soup somewhere in this freezer.")
"A Food Romance" chronicles the adventures of Day-Lewis and her American boyfriend as they pursue great food from Somerset to San Francisco, Puglia to the Pyrenees. She writes of her detemination not to let the tourist throngs spoil her time in Venice:

one has to consciously ignore and not be annoyed by the crowds as thick as they are down Oxford Street; likewise by the gawping and clicking, the bumping and jostling, the fact that even the hidden corners, the back-street restaurants, are full of people just like us also trying to avoid people just like us.

and of curing jetlag with fried chicken at Blue Ribbon on New York's Sullivan Street

maize-coloured parcels of insanely crisp, hot, spicy, battered chicken with buttery mash, collard greens and the infamous bowl of runny honey to dip your chicken into. Strange, but it's just the thing to order hot off the plane from England when the time clock is playing havoc and you need pots of comfort food and sleep.

She writes of brunch with Julia Roberts and school holidays with her brother Daniel (yes, that Daniel Day-Lewis), of her father, poet-laureate Cecil Day-Lewis and his great friend Kingsley Amis, of famous chefs and noted restaurateurs. But she also writes of people whose names you wouldn't recognize-- like Lidia, who had been making agnolotti for nearly 50 years for a tiny restaurant in the village of Valdivilla or Guiseppe del Console who makes an intensely fruity olive oil with the "aroma of artichoke and bitter almonds and olive leaves" in Corato, Puglia.
For a year, she traveled and ate and cooked and questioned and reflected and then she wrote about it all. I loved every page. Consider giving it as a Valentine's Day gift -- with love from you to you.

From Puglia

The Slow Food dinner in the countryside of Puglia began with 17 appetizers, including freshly-fried little croquettes of I-know-not-what, sauteed zucchini slices, marinated peppers of various hues, olives, radishes and one bowl containing pale green slices of what looked like cucumber but tasted as if a melon had been frolicking in its gene pool.

J got that I-have-to-grow-this look in his eyes, while I gave silent thanks that there were no visible seeds for him to scrape into a napkin. Our host wrote the name "Carosello barese" on a small piece of paper and J tucked it into his wallet. Two days later, when we arrived in Bari, I knew that museums, churches -- even lunch --were on hold until we found a seed store.

Our taxi driver had a small English/Italian dictionary that did not consider the word "seeds" a necessary term for tourists to translate. We pointed to the word "plants" and acted out seed-sowing and vegetable picking, managing only to mystify the poor driver. We then pantomimed "just drive around through the shopping district."

Who knew Bari had so many Bennetton stores?

Finally the driver found a policeman who spoke Engish and sent us off to a garden shop near an industrial area. Fearful we'd have trouble finding another taxi, we took the driver inside with us--and when J showed a salesclerk the carefully saved paper, the cab driver went into full operatic mode with much arm-waving and forehead slapping and sentences that began "AAAAHHH: Carosello!" and continued with -- I think -- statements that if we'd just told him we wanted carosello seeds in the first place he'd have known exactly where to take us.

So now J grows not only 'carosello mezzo lungo barese', but also 'carosello bianco leccese' and 'carosello tondo di fasano cianciuffo'. And every bite reminds me of a banquet in Puglia and a crazy cab ride and a driver who probably still talks about the weird Americans who spent their only day in Bari looking for vegetable seeds.

Thanks to the glories of the internet, you can find the seeds without traipsing to Puglia.