Yet, if every ingredient in the dish is good and healthy, it’s a revelation.
Angelica doesn’t like clams. That’s what she said. Then she specified that she doesn’t like something about the texture.
I joked about it: “Of course you can’t eat the shell!”
“At least there would be a little crunch,” she replied.
The fact is, she ate the clams, with spaghetti, zucchini, pine nuts, garlic, parsley, and the number one Valdichiana olive oil.
In reality, she had never eaten them before—that is, before discovering their flavor and realizing that she liked them.
She didn’t “know” them. She “learned” clams. She “learned” something she didn’t know: that she liked clams. The clams revealed themselves to her.
Waking up to cooking is a must: waking up from molecular cuisine, from supplements, from industrial sauces with all the same ingredients. Knowing how to cook, ultimately, means knowing how to make a bruschetta that’s toasted, not burned, and knowing how to season it with the right extra virgin olive oil.
So it means knowing how to choose the right bread, knowing how to choose the right oil. Waking up in the kitchen means knowing how to cook a hamburger just right, so that it stays tasty and succulent. It takes practice to get it perfect. Just wake up and exercise, every day, like we stretch when we get out of bed.
Waking up to cooking doesn’t mean spending hours in the kitchen—who has time these days? It means dedicating time to yourself, taking care of your body and your health without neglecting the pleasures of the palate (because pleasure is fundamental in life). For this, very little is needed: a packet of good-quality spaghetti, a clove of garlic, some tomatoes—even peeled, picked, and canned at the end of summer (you have to trust, and you trust when you know what you’re doing)—a drizzle of good olive oil, a pinch of salt, two basil leaves, a sprinkling of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano. How long do you think it will take you to delight in these forkfuls of delight? The time it takes to boil the water plus the time it takes to cook the pasta: about half an hour.
There’s no excuse for lack of time.
Waking up is necessary.