A visit to Florence with author Sarah Winman and food writer Emiko Davies
A special edition of Something to Eat and Something to Read where we talk to author Sarah Winman and food writer Emiko Davies about what food means to them and how it shapes their stories
Well here we are at episode four of our podcast! And this one is a special edition of Something to Eat and Something to Read where we talk to author Sarah Winman and food writer Emiko Davies about what food means to them and how it shapes their stories.
Thank you to Sarah for chatting with us about the kindness of strangers, how being given a meal or a good coffee can make you feel more than your circumstances, how food is memory and place, and how the idea for Still Life found her.
Both of us love this book, a true “four course nourishment” that sweeps across four decades of the lives of Ulysses and his friends who become family as they move from England at the end of WW2 to Florence in Tuscany and start a new life.
And thank you to Emiko for sharing her story with us too, how she writes about all the senses when writing about food, her food memories, the importance of birthday cake and how she came to be Sill Life’s food consultant! And read right to the end please for a very delicious recipe Emiko was good enough to share with us!
Our interviews with Sarah and Emiko are available to listen now on Apple podcasts
This episode is brought to you by our books, In Good Company by Sophie Hansen and Reading the Seasons by Germaine Leece & Sonya Tsakalakis:
Our thanks to:
Emiko Davies for her photos that bring Florence alive and taking the time to talk to us
Sarah Winman for her writing and conversation
Sophie and Abby of Smith and Jones who have allowed us to use their music during this podcast.
Finally, our podcast producer Kristy Reading
Reading and eating from the same story
To further set the mood…thank you so much Emiko Davies for sharing these images, words and this BEAUTIFUL recipe with us!
“Ulysses veered right down Via dello Sprone towards his workshop. He walked across Piazza dei Sapiti and somewhere amidst the spray of Christmas lights, the sound of a violin spoke of loneliness. He put the key in the lock and pushed open the heavy wooden door. He switched on the light and dust roiled in the flare of the overhead bulb.”
Food writer, photographer and author of award-winning Italian cookbooks, Emiko Davies has lived in Florence for many years and written extensively on the history of Italian food. To add to her CV, Emiko became a food consultant for Sarah as she wrote Still Life. She noticed the tiny details about Tuscan life over those years, including the type of food Sarah’s characters would have been eating. Details we may not know, such as when eggplant was first seen in Florence, but details that add enormously to the richness and texture of this absorbing tale of ordinary lives through extraordinary times.
As well as providing us with photos (such as the one above of the street where Ulysses would have had his workshop), Emiko has also given us a recipe Sarah used in the book. It was hard to choose but we all agreed that we should let one of the characters choose for us. So here it is, a meal chosen by Alys:
“Kid soon clocked up 152 words of Italian and a smudge of slang and began to scowl like a native. She tried coccoli for the first time, balls of deep-fried bread dough, and declared it was her second-best day ever.”
Coccoli (Tuscan fried dough balls)
These are eaten as part of a classic Tuscan antipasto or aperitivo — they go very well with a glass of something bubbly! This is almost always served with Tuscan prosciutto but try it also with mortadella. Try looking for a locally made stracchino cheese, which a fresh, creamy, tangy spoonable cheese. Squacquerone is very similar. If you cannot get this soft fresh cheese, try burrata or stracciatella, which is the creamy inside of the burrata.
Makes about 35 coccoli
400 gr plain flour
300 ml lukewarm water
1 level teaspoon of dried yeast (or about 10 grams or a small chunk of fresh yeast)
Salt
Vegetable oil for frying
To serve: paper thin slices of prosciutto and stracchino cheese
Place the flour in a large bowl. Pour some of the water in a small cup and soften or dissolve the yeast in this water, then add this and the rest of the water to the flour, mixing until you have a smooth batter. Add a teaspoon of salt and stir through to combine evenly. Cover and let rise in a warm place for an hour or so (you can also do this the night or morning before you want to use it, but store it in the fridge for a long, slow rise). When it is ready it should look as though it has grown in volume and is puffed with large bubbles.
Pour the oil into a medium saucepan until it’s about 5-7 cm deep – enough oil for the coccoli to float in. Place the pan over medium heat and bring the oil to a temperature of about 160°C. You can use a sugar thermometer or test with the end of a wooden spoon – the spoon should be surrounded immediately by lots of tiny bubbles as soon as it hits the oil. If the oil starts smoking, it’s much too hot – turn down the heat or remove from the heat to cool it down for a moment. You should be aware that once oil has reached smoking point you do not want to reuse it again so you should discard this oil appropriately after it has cooled.
Using two tablespoons to help you, pick up blobs of batter and lower them into the hot oil. They should puff up nicely about the size of apricots. Cook them over this steady heat for about 2 minutes, turning the coccoli so that they cook evenly. I like to cook these in batches of about 5 at a time, no more. Transfer to a plate lined with absorbent kitchen paper and season them with salt immediately. Serve while hot with thin slices of prosciutto and stracchino cheese and eat it like this: Spoon a blob of stracchino cheese artfully onto a dough ball, wrap a slice of prosciutto around it and enjoy!
Emiko’s latest cookbook Cinnamon and Salt will be published in March 2022
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