ILLUSTRATIONS: ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES
I don’t have much time for purity for purity’s sake. It feels overwhelmingly bleak. It’s to food what “Well, actually…” is to conversation. It sucks out all the joy. And often it’s a slick form of snobbery too. The person sneering up their sleeve at you for using pancetta instead of guanciale in your carbonara doesn’t care what it tastes like. They’re very excited though that they’ve caught you out in your (to them) lamentable act of ignorance. My advice to you is to move along quickly before they start droning on about their gap year assisting an artisan salumiere in Umbria. Save yourself.
But I do like simplicity. It’s so restful. You know where you are. And sometimes, if you’re like me, that’s face-down in a creamy stilton. This is why the tricksy, on-trend, Insta-gasmy world of food innovation leaves me twitching, eye-rollingly irritated, with my tuto- meter set to MAX (it goes to 11).