ONE SELF PORTRAIT EVERY DAY in 2020 : 87

We have quite a few eggs but running low on flour so decided to make a rice tart and double check the recipe in my Artusi.

Many of the family recipes came from La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiar bene ( Science in the kitchen and the art of eating well). Published in 1891, it was a book of recipes and anecdotes collected by writer and food lover Pellegrino Artusi all over Italy. It was published 20 years after the unification of Italy and it’s the first recipe book that included food from all over Italy and not just regional. Apart from very good recipes it’s also a very good read.

The copy I have was given to me by my grandmother for Christmas in 1991. On the back end-papers there is a sticker from Fahrenheit “451” , a bookshop in Campo De’ Fiori where my second cousin, Francesca, used to work so I imagine Nonna asked Francesca to get the book for her. I remember seeing Nanni Moretti in that bookshop.

My grandmother was know as Teresita. She was the fourth child and when she was born they sent the farmer to go to the registry office and register her as Teresa Arus (Teresa was her grandmother’s (my great great grandmother’s) name but he got it wrong and registered her as Ines Arus.

My grandmother grew up being called Teresina and only found out that her real name was Ines when she was 25 and getting her paperwork in order to get married.

In Italy you can’t change your name but “know as Teresita “ was added. Ines Arus detta Teresita.

In it, Nonna Teresita wishes me the best of luck for “Zog”. In 1991, Lucia, Grant and I opened a restaurant in Monteulieu (a small village near Carcassone in the south of France). Lucia’s step father, Richard Booth, was the guy who started Hay-on-Wye as a second hand book village and he was setting up Montolieu to also be a book village and Lucia got given a building that used to be a café a few decades earlier. Anyway, I vaguely remember that at the time I wanted the restaurant to be called “Zog” after Zog I, King of the Albanians (born Ahmet Muhtar Zogolli). I must have been outvoted as our restaurant ended up being called “Le Café du Livre”. Anyway at the time I must have been convinced that Grant and Lucia were on my same wavelength as I got my grandmother to embroider “Zog” on an apron and on a cook’s hat.

Anyway I asked my mother how long this recipe book has been in our family and discovered a couple of things I didn’t’t know: my great grandfather had a cook and she was the one who originally introduced Artusi into our family. He was quite wealthy and didn’t have to work and … had a cook. Then during the depression (1926 / 1929) he lost everything, stopped having a cook and started working for the ministry of agriculture. My great grandmother, Augusta, turned out to be a great cook also following the Artusi. And from there it has been handed down the family.

27.3.2020.

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