General Tips
Look through any Italian-language cookbook and you’ll see it over and over again: q.b., short for quanta basta, or “just enough.” That’s the whole vibe. When I was researching this book, I spent hours in kitchens around Rome watching cooks “measure” in fistfuls, pour wine straight from the bottle into a pot, and eyeball their guanciale quantity. It was useless for me to trail behind with a measuring cup and a scale. So I ate, took notes, and committed the ingredients, methods, and textures to memory, then went home and reverse-engineered the recipes for you.
The recipes in this book were all tested in an American kitchen. Most use volume measurements to keep things approachable. But when it comes to flour—whether you’re making pizza, bread, or pasta—we’re talking metric. Cups and spoons are cute until your dough is too wet or your loaf collapses. Do yourself a favor and get a digital scale that measures in grams. You can find a decent one for under fifteen dollars, and it might change your life . . . or, at the very least, your pizza.
Seasoning
Salt your water like you mean it. Whether you’re cooking pasta, blanching greens, or boiling potatoes, the water should taste like a well-seasoned broth. Go even saltier when boiling fresh pasta—it doesn’t hang out in the water long and needs all the help it can get. If you’ve got the time and fridge space, salt meat the night before. Salting in layers as you cook is essential for building flavor. Trust your instincts and when I say “a heavy pinch,” I mean a serious, four-finger pinch of salt.
Prep
Read the headnote and recipe all the way through before you do anything. That’s where I tell you if there’s an overnight marinade or some other sneaky step.
Pasta Portions and Cook Times
Most of the pasta recipes in this book are portioned at about 100 to 125 grams (3½ to 4½ ounces) per person. If it’s the star of the meal, that’ll feed four. If you’re serving it as a primo before a secondo, it’ll stretch to six. As for doneness: al dente means “to the tooth,” but in Rome, you will often find pasta cooked al chiodo, “to the iron nail,” less cooked than al dente , with a serious bite. If the pasta seems undercooked to you, trust me, it’s intentional.
Baking by Hand
I love mixing dough with my hands. It’s the only way to really understand how the dough is changing and how it’s coming together. There’s something primal and deeply satisfying about it, a little window into how people cooked before stand mixers and sourdough influencers. If you’re new to baking, it’ll teach you how flour and water behave. If you’re a pro, it’ll keep you connected to your dough.