Start living “the quanto basta” way
Learning Italian recipe lingo with cookbook author Amber Guinness
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The hallmark of really good Italian cooking, especially Tuscan, says cookbook author Amber Guinness, “is the elevation of incredibly humble, simple ingredients to something sublime through almost nothing more than patience and heat.”
Patience and heat, people. Let that be the mantra for the rest of your week. And for the rest of your life? It’s time to start living “the quanto basta” way, as Amber’s new cookbook tells us. It’s an Italian term that means “as much as you need,” and it shows up often on ingredient lists in Italian cookbooks. If you see “1 cup of flour, Q.B.,” sorry, gram-obsessed bakers, it means you might need a little more, a little less. You decide.
What if cooking were a little more intuitive? Maybe we’d have better trust in ourselves, at least when we’re in the kitchen rolling Amber’s malfatti—a “mouthful of softness”—or making her balsamic-glazed lentils with bacon. Dive into her recipes in Winter in Tuscany: Cozy Recipes and the Quanto Basta Way, Italian Coastal: Recipes and Stories From Where the Land Meets the Sea, and her first book, A House Party in Tuscany.
Though she was born in London, Amber grew up in the Italian countryside and now lives in Florence. She also hosts a painting school with a close friend at her childhood home in Tuscany (as well as other locations), cooking for all the guests for five days. If you like painting, eating, and breathing fresh air, you might want to look into that…
In the meantime, we’ll be making Amber’s Drunkard’s Spaghetti, in which onions and pancetta melt into a red wine sauce. (Find the recipe in her book!) The pasta actually boils in red wine-spiked water, soaking up the wine’s ruddy burgundy hue. It’s a traditional dish that was made with leftover wine after a Chianti season—sustainability, Italian-style. But that gives you permission to make it with the random wine someone brought to your last party. It had a calling.
Amber’s ultimate comfort food
Italian sausage and lentil stew is a classic, comforting dish often eaten for good luck on New Year’s Eve in Italy—but Amber makes a strong case for enjoying it all year long. Her Sausage, Lentil & Chickpea Stew is a streamlined take on the tradition, using canned lentils and chickpeas for a version that’s just as hearty, but weeknight-friendly.
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Perfect timing! I'm heading to Florence for the first time in about a week and I'm so looking forward to embracing the "quanto basta" way ✨