I know some people regard saltimbocca as somewhat infra dig; I suppose it makes them picture giant pepper grinders and candles in bottles (alas, I love both those things). But I think it’s a good – even a grand – dish, at once vaguely unexpected and exotic, and extremely simple. Take some veal, wrap it in prosciutto with a sage leaf or two, and fry quickly. Finish with a glossy sauce of butter and marsala. Eat with roast potatoes and green beans, enjoying as you do the way the bitterness of the herb cuts the sweetness of the wine. On the plate it feels like such a treat: less expensive than steak, but also a bit more fancy and put together.
For me, this has been the year of saltimbocca, or what I’m going to call easy-fancy (I know: it sounds like a slightly boring magazine from the back end of the 1990s). Flipping through my diary, I see that in 2023 I’ve eaten out a lot less often, the cost of restaurant-going having become prohibitively expensive – and this has brought with it various knock-on effects, one of which is that I now spend a bit more on shopping for weekend dinners, on the grounds that the outlay is still going to be a lot less than if I’d outsourced them altogether. And this is where easy-fancy comes in. Fresh tuna from the fishmonger; that tahini bread and butter pudding I just couldn’t resist once I was inside the new Honey & Co deli. Like homemade saltimbocca, these small indulgences are compensation for the fact that restaurants must be swerved just lately, the better to avoid palpitations.
