Aldo Zilli - My Italian Country Childhood--A Chefs Journey From the Hills of Abruzzo to the Heart of Soho

S ix-year-old boys should be thrilled when their dad takes them out for the day at Christmas. Especially if theyve spent all year dreaming that he will spend time with them. But I wasnt thrilled. I was crying my eyes out. Dad and I werent off to see Santa or a pantomime. We werent going to buy Mum a present or do any fun stuff. We were off to the abattoir. It was my turn to help kill all the family pigs. I ended up hoarse with crying and covered in pigs blood. Oh, and did I mention it was Christmas?

Life on a poor Italian farm is never going to be a barrel of fun. Its about survival, not enjoyment. And life in a big Italian family isnt always all its cracked up to be either especially if you are the forgotten final son who was too young to join in any of his big brothers games.

I was born on 26 January 1956 to a pair of exhausted, shell-shocked parents. My mother Maria was forty-two and had thought her childbearing days were long gone. My dad Massimo was ten years older. If he had wanted a new child at all, he had wanted another daughter. Instead, he got me, his eighth son, born six years after the last of all the others. One day I would be extra help for his fields, but until then he just saw me as an extra mouth to feed a noisy one, at that.

The farm my dad rented was lost in the Abruzzo hills on the Adriatic side of Italy. We had snowy peaks above us, thick forests all around and very few near neighbours. But we did have plenty of land and there was nothing we didnt try to grow on it, no single inch we didnt work. I was on the team from the moment I could walk. Every spring we would all help plant out our fields for watermelons while the eagles circled above.

We tended the vines, the fig, almond, cherry and olive trees. We had herb gardens stocked with everything and dominated by rosemary. We grew our own rocket, courgettes, chickpeas, lentils, artichokes and asparagus you name it. We went truffle hunting and we kids were sent out to pick wild mushrooms and berries. That was the fun stuff. The hard bit was that all year ditches had to be dug or cleared to move the rains around. Old bushes had to be burned off and good soils lugged around by hand.

Nothing ever stopped. And the crops and the fields and the harvests were only the half of it. The animals mattered almost as much. We had pigs, cows, sheep, chickens, rabbits and ducks which meant at least once a year we also had piglets, calves, lambs, chicks, bunnies and ugly little ducklings. That part of farm life should have been paradise for a little boy of six. I loved to nurse the little lambs and thought newly hatched chicks were the most wonderful creatures in the world. But I also knew that these werent my pets. Going to the abattoir at Christmas had taught me that. Going to the market with the cows always reminded me.

My brothers would walk the cows to auction once or twice a year. I always cried when I saw the herd being taken away by its new owners. I liked the cows faces I used to go out into the stable and talk to my favourites when no one else was looking. It felt as if they were my friends. But they didnt get to hang around. If we werent eating my favourite animals we were selling them! I was a sensitive little boy and it took me a long time to get over that.

Our farmhouse was big, basic and crowded. Mum, Dad, my sister Giuseppina, my seven brothers and I werent alone. By the time I was walking, my sister and two of my elder brothers had got married and started families. They all lived with us as well. I shared a room with a whole gang of kids no more than a few years younger than me. Back then, I hadnt realised that I was actually everyones uncle. If I had thought about it, I could have pulled rank I might have got a bed to myself instead of having to share.

We had a big wooden table to crowd around at mealtimes. My dad said grace before meals and we ate when he did. If anyone was late to the table, they missed the meal. Nothing was saved. We all moved fast, we ate fast, we talked fast. If you wanted to be noticed, you had a struggle because everyone else was always too busy to pay attention. If you screamed, you really screamed. We all made so much noise it would probably be drowned out.