Non piu di cinque

I hope you don’t mind Rhiannon, but I found your comment on Food Quote #7 really interesting and so have promoted it to a blog post to try and generate some discussion!

I’m reading a book called ‘The Glassblower of Murano’ by Marino Fiorata which is excellent. Anyway, you’re probably wondering what that has to do with food, its just that it mentioned the Venetian saying “non piu di cinque”. To quote from the book – “Never more than five. Venetians say that you should not use more ingredients than you have fingers of one hand”. I’m not sure if that’s just to do with sauces or the meal overall? Have you heard of such a saying? I tried to keep to it with my pasta dish tonight but got to 8! garlic, mushroom, baby leaf greens, peas, rosemary, cambozola (+a bit of milk) and pasta (+paremsan sprinkling to finish). It was still delicious even if it was more than five!

Flicking through my cookbooks, I struggled to find any recipes with only five ingredients! I’m sure there are many delicious recipes that exist that contain five ingredients or less. Do any of you have any that you know of and recommend?