Judión beans, burnt butter, far too much pepper
Card no. 214 · written down on a wet Tuesday in March
- Time 6 hours
- Serves 6 at a squeeze
- The day A quiet Sunday
I am not a chef. I cook one thing properly at a time on a two-ring stove, and I write down what happened so I can do it again in November. The cards live in my grandfather's tackle box. There are two hundred and fourteen of them and this is the one people write to me about.
Elio, third floor, back of the building
Who is cooking
I learned to cook by trying to get one pot right
My grandfather Marco kept his fishing tackle in a green metal box. It came to me empty, and I started filling it with index cards, because my grandmother's bean pot had gone with her and nobody in the family could get it back. It took eleven attempts and four ruined cards.
I survey ships for an insurer two days a week. The other five I cook, badly at first and then less badly, one dish at a time, on two rings and in an oven that runs forty degrees hot. Everything gets written down in the same order: what I bought, what I did, what went wrong, what I would change. That is the whole method.
The photographs are mine as well. There is exactly one good hour of light in this flat, between four and five, and most of what you see here was cooked to be ready at ten to four.
Elio Ferrante
- Based in Trieste, third floor at the back
- Writing cards since 2016
- Cards in the box 214
- The stove Two rings, one temperamental
The cards
Recipes I have cooked more than four times
Nothing goes in the box until it has worked four times in a row. The numbers are where the card sits in the drawer.
Shoulder of lamb, in the oven at ten
The Tuesday loaf
Pici by hand, garlic, fried breadcrumbs
Leeks over coals, hazelnut, October harissa
Rye, caraway, a very slow oven
The pantry
What is always in the cupboard
None of it is hard to find. Half of it was bought for one recipe and then earned the shelf.
01
The jar shelf
Filled in autumn, gone by June
- Salted anchovies Sicilian, in a tin the size of a fist
- Capers packed in salt, rinsed twice, never brined
- Preserved lemons last October's, four jars, one already open
- Harissa made the week the peppers get cheap
02
The dry shelf
Weighed, never scooped
- Judión beans the big flat ones, soaked overnight without fail
- Bomba rice for Sunday, and only Sunday
- Strong white flour plus a bag of rye I keep meaning to use
- Fried breadcrumbs from the ends of last week's loaf
03
The cold shelf
Bought small, used fast
- Unsalted butter two blocks, one of them for burning
- Eggs from the stall by the old fish market
- Hard cheese a wedge, wrapped in paper, never plastic
- Lard for the pastry nobody expects
04
The windowsill
Alive, mostly
- Bay a leggy plant, seven years old
- Rosemary survives me
- Parsley replaced monthly, my fault
- Chillies drying on a string since September
Besides dinner
Four things I can be asked for
The table
Ten seats around one table in my flat. One menu, cooked while you sit there, put down in the middle for people to argue over.
Ask about it
Recipe development
Recipes that hold up in a home kitchen: three rounds minimum, weights in grams, and a note on what goes wrong at every step.
Ask about it
An afternoon in my kitchen
Bread, or a slow pot, or pasta by hand. You cook it, I stand beside you and say very little. Everyone leaves with the card.
Ask about it
Photography
Window light, no team, no styling kit beyond what is in the drawer. Food photographed the way it looks just before it is eaten.
Ask about itIn numbers
Nine years, one small kitchen
What people say
Notes from the table and the desk
We ran his winter braise in the February issue and got more letters about it than anything else that year. The note about burning the butter first is the reason it works.
He tested our stock in a domestic kitchen for six weeks and came back with three recipes and a list of everything wrong with our packaging. We used all of it.
I have been to the table four times. He puts the pot in the middle and lets ten strangers argue about bread for three hours. I have never eaten better in a flat.
I asked him to shoot the menu because the last photographer made everything look like a laboratory. His pictures look like food that is about to be eaten.
The notebook
Things I worked out this month
Nine years of the same three numbers
I have made the Tuesday loaf about four hundred times and changed the recipe twice. Here is what those two changes were and why the rest of it never moved.
Everything I put in a jar in October
Four jars of lemons, three of harissa, two of quince and one experiment I would not repeat. A month of the year that pays for itself in February.
What I actually buy, and where
Three stalls, one shop and a supermarket I am not embarrassed about. The list of things worth walking for is shorter than food writing suggests.
The last Saturday of the month, ten seats
One menu, cooked in the flat, put down in the middle of the table. Write to me and I will tell you what is in the pot.