Five Quarters by Rachel Roddy

Last Updated on February 2, 2026

Recipes and Notes from a Kitchen in Rome.

Five Quarters (Headline Home) is an intriguing title that evokes a mathematical puzzle. In Testaccio, the wedge-shaped neighbourhood of Rome where Rachel Roddy has lived since 2005, the fifth quarter, or quinto quarto, is a style of cooking developed by local slaughterhouse workers in the 1890s. They received part of their wages in kind – offal. Offal, known as the fifth quarter of the animal, as it comprises a quarter of the animal’s weight, was taken home and turned into dishes filled with both nutrients and flavour. The fifth quarter refers, Roddy explains, to ingredients that are often discarded and which Romans are skilled at using.

Five Quarters is much more than a cookbook. It tells the story of Rachel Roddy’s first year living in her flat in Testaccio, a neighbourhood that she describes so clearly, it is as if we are accompanying her to the food market. Rachel Roddy is not only a recipe developer, a cookbook writer and a very popular columnist in The Guardian, she is also a storyteller and to my mind, it is also the stories about the food we eat that are as compelling as what is on our plate. On moving to Italy, Roddy was pleased to discover that Roman cuisine is in many ways very similar to the Northern English food she grew up eating. This is not surprising considering that England was part of the Roman Empire for three and a half centuries. Rachel Roddy has the ability not only to present recipes that are simply begging to be made in one’s own kitchen, but she also shares with us details of her Roman life.  Most of us do not have the opportunity to live in Rome, but we can take vicarious pleasure from Roddy’s experiences.

Although republished in June 2024, Five Quarters is Rachel Roddy’s first cookbook – it was originally published in 2015, when it won the André Simon Food Book Award as well as the Guild of Food Writers’ First Book Award. Since then, there have been others, most recently, in 2021, The A – Z of Pasta: Stories, shapes, sauces, recipes. Now Five Quarters has been reissued with a new format. It is a small size, which is handy for use in the kitchen, has a gorgeous cover, and has no photographs.

Although Five Quarters was originally published as a full-colour cookbook, it is refreshing to page through a recipe book with no photographs. We have all become accustomed to the gorgeous pics that accompany the hefty tomes that weigh down our kitchen bookshelves. The UK has a terrifically talented group of food photographers, and I regularly enjoy my fix of food porn even when I am not planning to cook. This newly published edition of Five Quarters takes me back to the earlier days of my cooking experience. I think of my well-thumbed edition of The Silver Palate cookbook – the Marbella chicken page came loose decades ago from overuse. Then there are volumes one and two of Marcella Hazan‘s The Classic Italian Cookbook, from which I learned to cook Italian food. Elizabeth David’s books that I collected in Oxfam shops have accompanied me on many self-catering trips in France. Learning the ins and outs of Indian cuisine came from the early works of Madhur Jaffrey. What these esteemed books all have in common is that none of them has any photographs. While I was learning to cook, I never knew what the dishes should look like according to a food stylist, yet the food tasted no worse for it. Nowadays, my plating is often a case of emulation rather than imagination.

By good fortune, I received my copy of Five Quarters at the same time as a new farmers’ market opened in my neighbourhood. Here I bought boxes of Isle of Wight tomatoes, organic artichokes, baby courgettes with their flowers attached, and all manner of greens. Paging through Five Quarters, I found recipes to match my ingredients. I long to take the book to Rome, to shop in the markets Rachel Roddy frequents, and then return to my apartment to cook.

I spent a very happy day in my garden reading Five Quarters from cover to cover. Every few pages, I returned to my kitchen to try something out. I began with the first chapter, antipasti. I adore antipasti – even though I’m more experienced at making Middle Eastern-style mezze. It is my preferred way of eating – sharing, picking, scooping, and inevitably ruining yet another shirt by dripping olive oil onto myself.

Courgettes with their flowers attached came first – delicate and so colourful with the torn flowers strewn into the sautéed rounds of green. I’ve never eaten courgette flowers raw, and Five Quarters has all sorts of ideas on how to enjoy these. As I worked my way through the recipes, I made a note to buy Pecorino and broad beans at the market on the weekend. Also, a bag of puntarella, which I’d noticed on the stall but didn’t know how to prepare. Five Quarters now has me informed.

I have been frying coins of courgettes forever – it is my son’s favourite side dish. I’d never realised what a difference drying the rounds out in the sun makes to the finished dish. Rachel Roddy’s book is not reinventing the wheel, but my goodness, it has helped up my game. ‘This was delicious’ was the response I had as a pile of fried courgettes disappeared in a trice. I enjoyed the garlicky tartness created by adding slivers of garlic, which I warmed through in the hot oil (off the heat), and the addition of a small splash of Moscatel vinegar – I had used up the last of the red wine vinegar the recipe calls for

Recipes aside, I laughed out loud at many of her descriptions. Comparing cheeses, Rachel Roddy writes that if ‘Parmigiano Reggiano is a smooth, sophisticated type with a history of art degree and a flat in Kensington, then pecorino romano is a bit of a rogue with an accent as thick as treacle, a great record collection and plenty of charm’. Courgettes look a bit like a Las Vegas showgirl with their gaudy flower headdress. And oh, how can anyone resist rushing to make peperonata (sweet pepper and tomato stew) with a poached egg, ‘the yolk spilling into the red stew and making your plate look like a desert sunrise’? I am even willing to substitute my favourite brunch – a fiery shakshuka – for its sweeter Roman cousin.

The second chapter is Soup and Pasta. I grew up in a household where we ate soup almost every day of the year. A meal without soup was unthinkable. Roddy’s description of minestre (soups) had me nostalgic for my childhood. She uses lots of legumes, which makes this collection of recipes perfect for those of us eating more plants and less meat. I am probably never going to make my own pasta, no matter how many episodes of Desert Island Discs or The Archers Omnibus I listen to while kneading. For those who wish to learn, Rachel Roddy makes it sound like a masterclass in mindfulness, and I am confident that with practice, the results will speak for themselves. I settled for a good-quality dried pasta to enjoy with the puttanesca sauce – tomatoes, anchovies, capers, and olives. Memory is a strange thing. As I dished up I told our son that my husband had cooked this sauce for me when we were dating. My husband replied that he had never made this sauce, but we had eaten it repeatedly at a local Italian we frequented back in the day. I prefer my romantic version of the story.

The third chapter focuses on meat and fish and looked fabulously wholesome – I could smell the meatballs, the slow-cooked cuts like oxtail, and the abbacchio al forno (roast lamb), which I had the joy of cooking in Rome many Easters ago when newly born lambs are sold in the market. It is a perfect example of the joys of seasonal cooking. As I rarely eat red meat nowadays, I earmarked some of the recipes for the special occasions on which I make an exception.

Vegetables are my mainstay, and the chapter in Five Quarters had plenty to keep me occupied. We enjoyed the Roman-style artichokes, stewed in water, wine and olive oil with a garlicky herby stuffing. Zucchini al tegame – courgettes cooked in olive oil – was good too. I will be returning to cook my way through the list of dishes. The course I cook least often is dessert, but Rachel Roddy’s dolci section has some terrific fruit and ice cream recipes along with cakes and biscuits, which are easy to make and will see one through from spring to Christmas when chocolate salami and spiced fruit cake with saffron are on the menu. Spiced quinces in syrup? Yes please!

As luck would have it, impromptu guests announced they were coming for dinner, leaving me with three hours to have a meal ready. Rachel Roddy to the rescue. Chicken ‘hunter style’ was quick to prepare – I even cut up a chicken into reasonably elegant pieces, although I would like to watch how Roddy’s butcher gets 12 portions from the bird when I only managed 8. There was not a scrap left over – the chicken had great flavour with thick, sticky gravy from that unmistakable marriage of chicken juice combined with a good quality white wine. The richness was cut through with a splash of red wine vinegar and a handful of olives. Moist and tender, and one to repeat. I served the chicken with braised lettuce and spring onion from the vegetable chapter. Its pleasantly bitter note paired well with the rich chicken.

For dessert, I recovered my rarely used Bundt tin from the back of the cupboard and baked ricotta and lemon ring cake. It uses olive oil, which gives the cake a summery yellow hue and a velvety olive oil flavour. Next time I am going to try a peppery extra virgin olive oil and the third time I am planning to deploy a rather aromatic lemon olive oil I was gifted from Sicily. Yes, this cake is on my repeat list. It was a most satisfying dessert served with Greek yoghurt and summer berries. We ate the leftover cake the following day with Roddy’s poached apricots in spiced syrup. Rachel Roddy introduces this cake as one for ‘the baking-inhibited,’ which I find to be the perfect description. As one of my guests has a Cordon Bleu diploma in patisserie, I was slightly nervous about baking the cake, but I needn’t have been as it got the thumbs up.

The book is peppered with stories about shopping for food, eating in local restaurants, and getting advice from friends. Rachel Roddy transports us to her own table as well as those at her preferred Roman restaurants. I can taste the spaghetti alle vongole, which she shares with her partner, Vincenzo, at La Torricella, and I fully approve of their strolling up the road to the gelateria for dessert.  Like characters in a novel, her shopkeepers and stallholders pop up throughout her stories. After reading the book, I feel that I would recognise Mauro, the fishmonger in her local market, and I am practically in tears of longing, so strong is my desire for a slice of pizza bianca from Forno Campo de ’Fiori.

I like to read recipe books at bedtime, but I would advise against doing so with Five Quarters. I became so hungry reading this wonderful book that I simply had to keep cooking throughout the day. Late at night might not be the hour to fire up the stove, but then again, it would be a perfect time, as Rachel Roddy advises, to soak some beans overnight for one of her tantalising dishes. This is a book you will want to return to again and again, part cookbook and part travelogue. It could just as well be called Rachel Roddy’s Rome. Brava!

You can buy Rachel Roddy’s book, Five Quarters, from leading bookshops or from Amazon