One of the most valuable lessons of the Italian kitchen is to make the most of everything you have available and never to throw anything away. No crumbs or bones are ever thrown in the bin. In a certain sense, a ragù is nothing more than a sauce made with leftover scraps of meat or fish or vegetables. In the classic Italian cookbook Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well, Pellegrino Artusi collected recipes from all over Italy – from north to south, west to east. We often say that, while Garibaldi was unifying Italy on the battlefield, Artusi did the same in kitchens across the country. The recurrence of certain ingredients is mesmerising. Just think about day-old bread. There are hundreds of recipes using breadcrumbs in soups, pastas and condiments, meat and fish dishes, and dessert cakes and flans – all made with day-old bread. In addition, the meat used to make a broth, is then re-used in hundreds of other recipes for stuffing, meatballs or pasta fillings. Vegetable trimmings, cheese rinds and, of course, bones all become the source of flavour for even more recipes that have been prepared again and again by mothers and grandmothers for centuries. The Italian cucina poverais something more than nose-to-tail philosophy, because it is not just about using every part of a pig or a carrot, but taking the best out of each part, at every stage of its lifespan.