Carluccio - A Recipe for Life

A Recipe for Life by Antonio Carluccio

First published in 2012 by Hardie Grant Books

Hardie Grant Books (UK)
Dudley House, North Suite
3435 Southampton Street
London WC2E 7HF
www.hardiegrant.co.uk

Hardie Grant Books (Australia)
Ground Floor, Building 1
658 Church Street
Melbourne, VIC 3121
www.hardiegrant.com.au

The moral rights of Antonio Carluccio to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publisher.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 978-1-74273-919-9

Commissioning Editor: Kate Pollard

Cover and internal design by Two Associates Front cover photograph by John Davis

CONTENTS

his is the real deal. In these memoirs Antonio Carluccio is as frank and honest about himself and his sometimes painful emotional life as he is direct about his sensual appreciation of food, wine and lifes other pleasures.

This ebullient Italian cook and writer has been my friend for a long time, and I knew a good deal about his passion for mushrooms, about his success as a restaurateur in Neal Street, Covent Garden, about the chain of Carluccio Caff (trattorie-cum-delicatessens) he built up, and about his many delightful and always instructive television series. But until reading his book I did not know about the melancholy and terrible depressions my jovial friend has suffered, about the attempts on his own life, or the failed relationships. Antonio has always contrived, until now, to show us his sunny side.

This, though, shines so brilliantly, and the story of his life is so rich and full of interest that his autobiography is compulsive reading and a very good and elegant read it is too! I first read it in one sitting, before going back to reread and relish some of the passages about menus he has cooked and eaten, the places he has been to and lived in, and the people he has met and loved especially the women. Antonio is a man who genuinely likes women, as much as he adores fresh, silky tagliatelle or beautiful, aromatic porcini.

This Italian has such a keen appreciation of the good things of life that he could almost be French. I fondly remember the time when a journalist invited Antonio and me to a competitive lunch French culture versus Italian culture, Raymond Blanc versus Antonio Carluccio. To the journalists dismay, we complimented each other on our respective nations cultural and gastronomic achievements. Her frustration showed as she wrote that we kept patting each others cheeks and kissing each other, and laughing and chatting, both in our broken English accents, throughout the entire meal.

Intelligent, erudite and analytical all desirable, even necessary qualities in a memoirist Antonio is also entertaining. Born in Southern Italy, he is now seventy-five, so can remember World War II, and has a good deal to say about it, as he does about regional differences in his native land. Those who think Britain is the only country where accents matter to ones social position will be startled by this book, almost as much as anyone (if there is any such person) who still thinks that Italian food consists of pizza and spaghetti Bolognese. His take on pre-War local politics in Italy is eye-opening, and he examines his (and my own) much-beloved British hosts with a nonetheless beady eye. His reflections are as full of interest as they are amusing.

Antonios odyssey has been as unusual as his hobbies (mushroomhunting and whittling). He has lived not only in Italy and Britain, but also in Austria and Germany. Like me, he is a self-taught cook, yet he deserves a great deal of the credit for persuading us in Britain that the merits of Italian food can be summed up in his own watchwords: minimum of fuss, maximum of flavour.

Above all, Antonio and I share a set of values, in both cases learned from our parents. We cherish and celebrate seasonality, freshness and sustainably produced ingredients. Antonios attitude to food is as sincere, open and loving, as he is candid about his feelings. Bravo, Antonio!

You will love this book.

hy does anyone write their memoirs? It was a question I have asked myself several times while working on mine, as I thought long and hard about my life over the last seventy-five years. I have sometimes found it quite hard, revisiting sad times and making sense of difficult ones, even while it has also given me pleasure to remember old friends and happy times. What I did want to do was to look at what made me the man I am today, and those experiences that shaped my life and allowed me to take my place in the world. Many will know me as Carluccio the Italian cook, from my books and television shows and the Carluccios Caffs that bear my name, but long before that I was Antonio the boy, coming of age in 1950s Italy, and Antonio the young man, leaving his family to live in Germany and finally, in the mid 1970s, arriving in England with my dog to make my home in London.

There are some things I know. I know that although I was raised in the north of Italy, my heart and soul are rooted in southern Italy where I was born. I also know that I am a traveller and an explorer at heart, both emotionally and physically, and that journey has taken me far. Even as a teenager I knew I wasnt conformist, but would always make my own way, living and learning and always true to myself. I know, too that my basic character is built mostly on my sensitivity to my surroundings and emotional response to life in all its sensual beauty, whether that comes from enjoying the sun on my face, preparing food with my hands, smelling the earth on a freshly picked mushroom, painting a picture on canvas, savouring a slice of cheese or whittling a hazel walking stick. First and foremost I live through my senses, without artifice or education in natura veritas and this I discover in retrospect has served me well.

And, looking back, I can see that it is always around food that my professional life has both evolved and revolved as I left my homeland and became, over time, an ambassador for Italian food abroad. It is hard to remember now that there was a time when the BBC could broadcast a television documentary about the harvesting of spaghetti grown on trees, as they did for an April Fools joke in 1957, and people believed them! Italian food, in all its regional and seasonal simplicity, was unknown here then. By the time I arrived in England eighteen years later, dried spaghetti was still only found in the Italian delicatessens of Soho and other areas of the UK where the Italian diaspora had made its home.

For me, cooking the food of my Italian heritage was a natural thing to do, it was what I had learnt in my mothers kitchen and it was the food I enjoyed: it was a pleasure to share it with friends and family, long before it became my passport to a professional life. The same with my passion for mushrooms, and I was delighted to discover when I came to England that the same abundance found in Italy could be found here, and I could happily forage for them even while they were not yet as prized by others as by myself.