Ahoy, there Lovebirds! It exists. An Italian cookery book by- cue trumpet fanfare- one Sophia Loren. In the Kitchen with Love was published in 1971. In an American edition, translated from the Italian original:
To open this book is to join Miss Loren in her own kitchen, where she talks about the art of preparing, serving and enjoying fine food. With customary spontaneity, she relates intimate details pertinent to the background of her favorite dishes...
Surprisingly, it’s actually quite good: I had assumed that it had been ghost-written, but then changed my mind on first reading; until I came across a glorious technicolor plate in which we discover that "Miss Loren likes to prepare tomato sauce with her cook, Livia”, and then you do begin to wonder who the actual author was...
All this Italian cooking reminds me of my all-time favourite gloomy Sunday afternoon feel-good film, How To Murder Your Wife, and if you’ve seen that wunderwerk you’ll know what I’m getting at. Except that it stars the devastatingly beautiful Virna Lisi. Bachelor Jack Lemmon marries her on a drunken stag night (she comes out of a cake), and then plots her murder. Why? Because she over-feeds him with delicious- if fattening- provincial Italian cuisine. Okay, Virna comes with a Wagnerian mother-in-law in tow and a tiresome, yappy little lap dog, but even so, it still has to be one of the most barmy, bonkers, crazy, ridiculous, implausible and bizarre motives for murder ever devised on celluloid.
Anyway, here’s Sophia Loren’s recipe for Gnocchi Alla Romana:
These gnocchi have a more delicate flavor than the others, as will be quickly seen from the ingredients.
For six people melt 3 tablespoons of butter in 1 quart of milk over a low flame, then increase the heat, and when the milk comes to the boil, pour in 1 cup of semolina, sirring it the entire time, when the mixture thickens and threatens to solidify, pour in another dash of milk; stir again, turn out the fire, add 2/3 cup of grated Parmesan, two egg yolks, without ever ceasing to stir.
When you see that the mixture, now very hot, has a uniform consistency, pour it out onto the marble top of the kitchen table, which you have previously dampened with cold water; shape it into a flat “cake”, about a quarter of an inch high, and leave to cool. Then with the rim of a glass cut the pasta into circlet: these of course are the gnocchi.
To cook them greasproof a fireproof dish and dust it with breadcrumbs; lay in it the gnocchi in tight rows wach with its edge resting on the next one, cover with melted butter and grated Parmesan, add another layer of gnocchi, then more butter and Parmesan; and bake uncovered in a moderate oven for one hour.
