| Our recipes |
My father never liked to give recipes away.
Never, that is, after the time a certain Venetian countess asked him for
his recipe for Scampi Armoricaine. He gave it to her, but then began to
notice that none of his local customers were ordering the dish anymore.
When asked why, they all said that they had been served such bad Scampi
Armoricaine by the countess that they never wanted to eat it again. From
that time on my father stopped giving out recipes. He felt that recipes
are more or less useless if they are not accompanied by an understanding
of the functions ot the basic ingredients. Once, when asked for the house
recipe for risotto, Caniglia retorted, "Rice, broth, and butter. Then,
onto the fire!"
The recipes of Harry's Bar have never before appeared
in print. So why. after all this time, have I decided to produce a cookbook?
Like my father I am a little nervous about recipes. When a recipe is
written down with weights and numbers, like a mathematical formula,
it looks fine, but it doesn't really give you enough to go by.
There is another all-important ingredient. The person using the recipe
must love food, love cooking, and love the people he's cooking for,
and that care and love, which are absolutely essential to the making
of any successful dish, cannot be prescribed in a recipe.
Now I have come to feel that just as writers share their thoughts in
writing, owners of beloved restaurants must share their recipes with
old friends. And since so many of our friends and customers are not
Venetians and cannot visit us often, I would like to present some of
the recipes they have enjoyed at Harry's Bar as a gesture of my appreciation
and goodwill.
I do this with the knowledge that however carefully you follow these
recipes, certain essential ingredients will be missing - the magic of
Venice, the special ambience of Harry's Bar, and the affectionate attention
of all us here. For this experience you must come in person to Harry's
Bar.
Arrigo Cipriani
