A small, gnocchi-like pasta called pisarei, with beans and just enough tomato sauce to bring them together. Fried chicken and courgettes braised in tomato sauce, made by Mum. A baseball-sized scotch egg (with kedgeree) from the Rubicon pop-up in West Bay, Dorset. Deep-fried anchovies with roast red peppers. Stuffed olives eaten from a paper cone at a train station. Pasta with sardines, fennel and rubble on top, at home. A friend’s apple-and-almond cake, enjoyed in her garden. Lamb baked with potato, tomato and breadcrumbs. Things I have enjoyed lately have an ingredient in common – kneaded into the dough for pasta; used in the coating for chicken, egg, anchovies and olives; toasted into rubble; both in a cake mixture and lining the tin; giving the lamb a crisp finish. Versatile and everywhere, breadcrumbs are the Kevin Bacon of ingredients.
And not just lately. In a poll I conducted with one other person, we decided that, after olive oil and salt, breadcrumbs are the hardest-working ingredient in our kitchens. Also, a shapeshifter, as varied as the loaves from which they come. And, arguably, more varied than the loaves, because of the many grades of crumb, from soft rags to the finest grit and everything in between, much of which has to do with the ageing process. And, in their shapeshifting, they also change the natures of the dishes they are part of: soft, white crumbs behave differently in the frier from fine sandy ones, and fried chicken tastes differently as a result. Preference steps in, too. On top of sardine pasta, I like soft crumbs, pulsed in the blender, then fried until they look a bit like the fragments of chips and batter that collect in the folds of fish-and-chip paper. My partner prefers the fine crumbs, also made in the blender, but from really dry bread and toasted in olive oil.
