Many years ago, I bought a house in a part of Tuscany called the Garfagnana, where we still go every summer.

The first time we stayed there, we heard the chug-chug-chug of a scooter making its way down the hill toward us. It was a neighbor called Mario, coming to bring us a box containing some tomatoes and a bottle of wine. It was a very nice gesture for him to make. But when we looked at the tomatoes, we were worried because they were so misshapen: not at all like the nice, round, shiny things you get in a supermarket. And the wine was cloudy, in a funny old bottle with no label on it. These can’t be any good, we thought. But we were grateful for his kindness, so we tried them.

And what we discover is that, even though magazines go to so much trouble nowadays to take beautiful photographs for their food sections, it’s unwise to judge what you eat solely by its appearance.

Those tomatoes had a taste that reminded me of the ones my uncle used to grow when I was a child. When I bit into the first one, the memory of being at his house came straight back. Nowadays supermarket tomatoes look perfect but taste of water; nobody’s going to have a happy memory of those. It’s a surprise they haven’t managed to grow square ones so that they can pack them more efficiently. But with Mario’s tomatoes, all you need is some salt, olive oil and some good bread, and you ‘ve got a meal. And his wine may have been cloudy and come out of an old bottle, but it was perfect.

It’s good to eat things at the correct time, when they ‘re in season, and as close as possible to where they were grown. What Mario had given us was the taste of Garfagnana.