Letitia Clark is living la dolce vita. The food writer, illustrator and cook, lives in Oristano, central-western Sardinia, where she spends her days making pasta with butter and fried sage, and her nights drinking aperitvo under the cool shade of olive groves. To the pandemic-fatigued onlooker, Clark’s life seems paradisical. So you can’t help but wonder how a budding chef from rural Devon swapped scones for sunshine and flew 1,280 miles away to start a new life on an island in the western Mediterranean sea.
The freckle-faced cook dials in from her mother’s home in Oxfordshire; she has temporarily left her idyllic abode in Oristano and is back in the UK to see friends and family, and for a noticeably “better Wi-Fi connection”. Clark traces her interest in cooking back to her Devonshire roots, where she grew up in a farmhouse with an orchard of apple trees picking apples for her father’s cider and for amber jelly. However, it was her dairy-hooked grandmother that had the most considerable influence on Clark’s cooking.
“She was a great eater, as much as she was a great cook,” Clark says. “She had a life-long devotion to dairy products; I have yet to meet anyone who loved cream and butter as much as her.” Clark fondly recalls time spent at her grandmother’s sleepy village in Wiltshire, where she would pick up fresh lardy cakes from the local bakery and note how food-savvy her grandmother was. “She very much instilled in me a love of produce as much as food. All these things very much became a part of my repertoire – regionality, local food, and innovation.”
What followed was a “long and winding” road into food, but all the lessons learnt from her grandmother started to “bubble up” once she went to Durham University to study English Literature. “When I was meant to be studying, I was taking books out by Nigel Slater and cooking for my flatmates,” Clark says. “I would spend hours making our student meals. One time, I spent an entire afternoon plucking a pheasant when I was supposed to be studying Jane Eyre!”
After a stint pulling pints at the local pub, Clark followed her instinct and signed up to do the course at Leith’s School of Food & Wine. She then went to work at The Dock Kitchen on the canal in West London but “loathed the chef lifestyle” so she returned to University to do a Masters (and pluck more pheasants) before working in publishing. However, the lure of the chef lifestyle yanked Clark back, and she went on to work in London restaurants like Spring at Somerset House, Leroy in Hackney, and the kitchens of Moro and Morito – where she fate intervened in the shape of her partner Luca.
“Once more, I started to grow exhausted of the chef life and was already planning my escape when I met Luca. He was a Sardinian chef at Morito, and we spoke a lot about the opportunity out there.” After doing a one-week language class in Covent Garden and practising her “Arrivederci’s” and “Buongiorno’s” on Duolingo, Clark took the plunge and moved out to Sardinia to live – in what Clark’s father referred to as an island of “goats and gangsters” – with Luca and his family back in 2017. Clark learnt tips and tricks of Sardinian cooking from Luca’s mum, Franca, and his nonna, Julia, against the backdrop of the unspoilt countryside.
Clark then moved to a “little agriturismo with a communal garden that boasts fresh figs and olive oil.” Her day-to-day sees Clark rise early to beat the burning glare of the sun before writing, cooking, drawing, and shopping at the local market – where she jokily explains how she continues to stick out like a sore thumb. “I’m very much the only non-Sardinian in Oristano,” she explains. “They always make jokes about how tall I am. My favourite strawberry seller keeps asking me if I’ll marry him if he finds a pair of high heels.”
As Clark started to settle in her new roost, Luca encouraged her to follow her passion and start writing. “I noticed how there wasn’t much literature on Sardinian cooking, and so clocked a gap in the market,” she explains. “Sardinia is slightly forgotten about as when people talk about Italy, they tend to think of Sicily or the Mainland and the North/South divide, but where does Sardinia fit into that? I have always had a passion for exploring the underdog and things that are forgotten about, so Luca and I thought a recipe book would be a great way of bringing Sardinia into the limelight. After all, it deserves it.”
As a result, Letitia Clark’s debut cookbook Bitter Honey: Recipes and Stories from the Island of Sardinia was born. The illustrated cookbook is a perfect ode to Sardinia, peppered with lively anecdotes and charming photography with the food dappled in the island’s warm light. The recipes, Clark explains, are partly influenced by Franca, Nonna Julia, and from her own experiences of food. It includes recipes for; roasted aubergines with honey, mint and salted honey; bream baked with potatoes; roasted pecorino salad with walnuts and honey and Malloreddus (shell-shaped pasta from Sardinia) with sausage and tomato.
Her recently-released cookbook La Vita è Dolce celebrates all things sweet inspired by her time living in Italy. “I was a pastry chef for a while at Spring, and I love making puddings, creating flavours and matching them together,” she says. Over lockdown, every breakfast became a pot of coffee and a piece of cake, biscuit or some ice cream. “I then had the idea of doing a book that was based on all things sweet,” she says, “I wanted a project that was positive, celebratory, that felt like total escapism from what had been a terrible year.”
“Olive oil and ricotta” are core to a lot of Letitia Clark’s recipes in La Vita è Dolce, bringing a certain “moistness and lightness” to her bakes. Expect to find recipes like Campari, citrus & yoghurt upside-down cake and ricotta, pear and hazelnut cake.
For Clark’s last ever supper, she opts for “something fishy” and settles on a sea-inspired mezze of “Bottarga pate” (cured fish roe, typically of grey mullet or tuna), “fried fresh anchovies,” and a “fresh octopus salad.” For her main course, “spaghetti alla Voegele,” and for her pudding, “trifle with some quince, rhubarb or cherry”. To drink, a bitter Campari soda with some salty olive.
For Letitia Clark, la vita é Dolce indeed.
Caramelised Apricot & Orange Blossom Upside Down Cake by Letitia Clark
This cake is one of my all-time favourites. Based loosely on a brilliant Diana Henry recipe it’s just chewy at the edges, tart and juicy on the top, moist, squidgy and buttery inside. The tartness of the apricots marries cuts through the richness of the sponge; the caramelised top adds an edge of fudgy-intrigue, and the exotic scent of orange blossom lifts the whole lot into the arena of the angels.
Upside down cakes are great for many reasons. Laying the fruit at the bottom of the tin takes far less time than decorating the top of a cake/tart with fruit, for some inexplicable reason, and looks just as (if not more) effective. In this arrangement, you have essentially captured both the shining, caramel-glory of a Tarte Tatin and the tart dampness of a good fruit sponge. It is the best of both worlds, almost like having your cake and eating it. – Letitia Clark
Ingredients
For the apricots:
7-8 apricots
140g sugar
60g water
15g butter
1 tbsp lemon juice (use the same lemon as for the zest)
For the cake:
175g butter, softened, plus a little extra to grease
175g caster sugar
1 unwaxed lemon, zest
a pinch of sea salt
3 eggs
100g plain flour
100g ground almonds
100ml yoghurt
2 tsp baking powder
3 tsp orange blossom water
Method
Grease and line with baking parchment a 23cm cake tin. Preheat the oven to 180.
Halve the apricots and remove the stones.
Melt the sugar and water in a saucepan, swirling rather than stirring to dissolve the sugar. Heat gently, watching it, until the sugar begins to colour (this will take up to 8-10 minutes). Watch carefully until it turns a light coffee colour, swirling occasionally to make sure the caramelisation is even. When it is caramel coloured remove from the heat.
Add the butter and turn the heat down to low, stirring with a wooden spoon until it all comes together. Add the lemon juice and stir well. You should now have a smooth caramel.
Pour the liquid caramel into the lined baking tin and smooth it out to form an even layer. Add the apricots, placing them close to each other, cut side down.
Beat the butter and sugar with the salt and zest, until pale and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one by one, until incorporated. Add the flour and the ground almonds and mix again. Finally add the yoghurt and the baking powder, and the orange blossom water. Stir until a smooth batter is formed, then ladle into the prepared tin.
Smooth the top then place in the oven, and bake for around 45-50 minutes, until golden and risen. Allow to cool for a few minutes before inverting onto a plate. Serve with some natural yoghurt.
Note: if you can’t find apricots or they aren’t in season, you can use tinned ones which work surprisingly well. I have a lot of time for tinned fruit (though it’s perhaps pure nostalgia).
