Here is a simple, practical recipe that I trust will be useful to many who don’t have the time for lengthy kitchen preparations. Boil the spaghetti as usual, drain it, and toss it with a little butter and parmesan. Then, for four, take a spoonful of meat extract and dissolve it in a small saucepan with just a few drops of boiling water. Pour the meat extract over the pasta, stir and serve. You will be pleasantly surprised by the exquisite flavour the pasta acquires – achieved with such a negligible investment of time.
This is a roughly word-for-word translation of an Italian recipe for spaghetti con l’estratto di carne (spaghetti with meat extract). It is another dish from Ada Boni’s Il Talismano della Felicità (The Talisman of Happiness), which was published in English for the first time last month and, according to the food writer and editor Angela Frenda, is “still considered one of the most precise and accurate of all cookbooks”.
