“It [rotolo] taught me a lot about Italian food. It also taught me to see food through the eyes of a woman. Rose [Rose Gray, the River Cafe’s co-owner] was incredible. She wasn’t a chef, but a self-taught cook at a time in Britain when there weren’t many women in the kitchen, and certainly no female owners who weren’t trained chefs. Mostly, Rose didn’t give a damn about protocol. She and her business partner, Ruth Rogers, had spent many years living in the mountains of Tuscany, and instead of the almost robotically methodical way most chefs operated at the time, they would buy fresh ingredients and write two new menus – one for lunch and one for dinner – every single day. They taught me about seasonality, and using the whole animal, and they gave context to ingredients. They weren’t academic about food – they taught me to be more responsive and more nurturing.”

(“Jamie Oliver: The recipe that changed my life,” as told to Dale Berning Sawa, The Guardian)

(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)