Gino DAcampo - Gino’s Italian Family Adventure: All of the Recipes from the New ITV Series

DEDICATION

DEDIZIONE

For my mum Alba and dad Ciro, who were missed more than ever while I was writing this book and filming the show. Their love, laughter, recipes and passion for food will be with me and my family forever.

CONTENTS

CONTENUTI

INTRODUZIONE

This is by far the most exciting cookbook I have written, because its about my family. Its about what we do and what we eat. Its the reality of our lives.

To Italians, nothing is more important than family and food. Its not just a clich that we think like this, its completely real. I strongly believe that food is the best way to bring everyone together. We all need to eat, and cooking together and eating around the table are great opportunities to spend some proper time with the people we love.

The recipes in this book are designed to make food fit into your life. It shouldnt be a big deal to eat well. The DAcampo family is a very happy healthy family and if its working for us, then it can work for everyone. Most of the recipes are inexpensive, using ingredients you can get anywhere, and they are generally quick to make. There are a few that are a bit more luxurious, but we all deserve a treat sometimes!

The book has really been in the making for the past ten years. Ive collected together all the notes, all the little pieces of paper that we have flying around the kitchen of things that we like to cook, and finally written it all down. I cant wait to share it with you.

Live like a king

In Italy, you can live like royalty with very little money. To have a good bond with your family and eat well doesnt cost a lot, and I really believe that is what life is all about. Travelling around the south of Italy for the television series that goes with this book allowed me to share with my family the experiences I had as a young boy growing up there. My children live a very privileged life and its really important to me that they appreciate their roots and know how lucky they are. I was a little bit nervous to see their reactions to some of the places I shared with them. I grew up in a small house in my little town of Torre del Greco, I had the same push-bike for ten years and I used to go fishing by myself all the time. It was very different from the life I have given them.

I come from a very large family. My mother had nine sisters and one brother and my father had two sisters. When we all got together it was always a big event, at one point we counted sixty-nine cousins! Food has always played a central role. One of my earliest memories is of my grandfather, Nonno Giovanni. He used to be a chef too. I remember like it was yesterday: it was Christmas time and we were in his kitchen. There were about thirty of us round for lunch and he showed me for the first time how to make potato gnocchi. It was something so simple, just potato and flour, a little bit of tomato sauce, fresh basil and Parmesan cheese. Job done. I remember thinking, This is pure magic. How can this man take just a handful of ingredients and feed a family of thirty something so delicious? That moment of realisation has stayed with me and the food I cook has always been very much based on that experience. I believe that you really need to do very little with food to eat well. Get the best ingredients that you can and then let them deliver great flavours. Theres no need to do any fancy plating up, Michelin-star style, or mess around with things. To me, that isnt true Italian food.

Real Italian cooking was created by normal working people. They used whatever ingredients were grown locally to them and were in season, and they knew exactly how to put those ingredients together to make something truly delicious. What ingredients were available depended very much on where they lived. The climate and the landscape have a huge impact on how well things grow, and, because of this, the style of Italian food varies a lot depending on where you are in the country.

Im from the south of Italy, near to Naples, where the weather is warmer. The food tends to be much lighter and fresher. There are a lot of olive groves there, so we use olive oil in our cooking, whereas in the north they tend to use butter because they can keep cows in their cooler climate. In the south we eat a lot of seafood; in the north they eat more meat. The food is also often a bit richer and heavier in the northern areas because its colder. People are very proud of their local specialities and Im no different. To me, nothing compares to a tomato grown near Naples, around Mount Vesuvius, its the best in the world.

The black soil around the volcano is rich in minerals from the lava, so it grows fantastic vegetables and fruit, while also supplying good grazing for the buffalos that produce milk for the amazing buffalo mozzarella you only find there.

Whenever you eat in Italy, you know youre having ingredients that are in season, when theyre at their very best. Its very exciting to me as a chef to work with such beautiful ingredients and its what still excites me about cooking Italian food today. If you buy seasonal produce, grown as locally as possible, it can make a huge difference to how your food tastes. I feel strongly about this and think we should all be making a bit of an effort to eat more seasonally. Whats the point of eating asparagus at Christmas? It wont taste as good and it will cost you more. We should only be buying asparagus in the spring in the UK, and we definitely shouldnt be flying in our fruit and veg from halfway around the world.