four ingredients

Timmy doesn't cook, or does he? A couple of days ago he chopped a few tomatoes, gently softened them in a pan with some good olive oil and garlic and tossed the whole lot with spaghetti and basil.
Before he realised it, he was cooking and in no time some great food was on the table. So I got thinking.
I have probably written over three thousand recipes in my time. Whatever, this isn't about me. But I have picked up a few things on the way and learning more as we speak.
When it comes to cooking food at home, how rarely do we keep it simple? I have to remind myself of this. Do we get anxious when we feel like we won't have enough food and that more is better? Do we think we are not being clever enough? Has something gone wrong if we have time to actually relax?
Three thousand recipes later, and I am starting to get it. We have heard it before. The key is simplicity, on every level of the process, from buying, to preparing to cooking the food. Many cuisines and cooking styles have simple components. Stir frying is often lauded as the thing any bachelor can cook. Wrong. You need fairly decent knife skills, a large wok (those silly little ones just don't cut it), a really hot gas
flame and a pantry of ingredients. Japanese? Life is too short to make your own sushi. Thai and Indian? Requires

lots of ingredients and time. Roasts and barbies?  Good enough but they are seasonal and barbies are not great for apartment living.  Fancy French? Get over yourself. Provincial French? Now we're getting somewhere.
Being here in Italy with a non-cook cook and I have decided this is it. This is the place and this is the food for beginners.
It's seasonal and elemental. It's fresh and approachable.
We found some white peaches at the market. Really, not like any other peach I had seen. Flat, disc shaped, more like a persimmon. So fragrant and so tasty. Next, the buffalo mozzarella. It is made from buffalo milk and if cheese were white velvet, this would be it.
We chopped the peaches. Nothing fancy like. We arranged the peaches on a plate. We simply tear the mozarella with our hands and randomly strew it over the peaches. We scatter over the basil leaves and finish it all off with a generous amount of fine, fruity extra virgin.
Four ingredients later and here was something any beginner can make.