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Frankie

“In Italy, probably more than anywhere else in the world, people live to eat rather than eat to live. All Italians, every single one of them, are passionate about food. In English, if someone is really into food they get called a ‘foodie’, but in Italian there simply isn’t a definitive word for this term. It would never occur to anyone to categorize someone as a foodie – it’s a given.

With this kind of attitude you’d think that Italy would be the obesity capital of the world. Yet in spite of being obsessed with food Italians are actually very fussy about what they put in their mouths. Italians simply don’t eat processed foods laden with fat, sugar and salt. Instead, ‘la vera cucina italiana’ is based upon local seasonal produce flavoured with fresh herbs and olive oil. Italians love their food but what they eat isn’t unhealthy.

My earliest memories of food and cooking are by most standards fairly sophisticated. My mother’s cooking, whilst simple in technique and not given to fussy sauces, was to say the least eclectic. This is because what she cooked on any given day depended on what fresh produce she found at her local market in Milan. This diversity was compounded by the three blissful months we spent in Sardinia with my grandparents every summer. Every day my Nonna would prepare a wonderful array of fresh local produce. This could be anything from line-caught eels and suckling pigs to homemade cheeses and wild boar. All the vegetables she served were fresh out of the ground from her ‘orto’ (vegetable patch). There were tomatoes the size of a fist that tasted of tomato in a way that I’ve never tasted since, figs so ripe they dripped with syrup, huge succulent peaches and the sweetest grapes I’ve ever tasted. Best of all, my grandparents produced thirty litres of olive oil every year from their own trees. I can still remember the excitement of helping to pick the olives as a young boy. That, my friend, is living.

My point is that Italians don’t go in for the ‘chicken nugget’ version of kid’s food – I ate what the adults ate and learned to love and respect the provenance of food from a very young age. It’s not unusual in Italy for five- or six-year-old kids to start drinking a little wine mixed with water, especially if it is ‘fatt’in casa’ (homemade), i.e. with Nonno treading the grapes. I think this contributes hugely to fact that Italian kids don’t binge drink. They are so used to being around alcohol that it negates the mystery and disposes with the ‘it’s naughty so I’ll do it’ issue.

I’m happy to say that my kids love their food and are not fussy, finicky eaters. I’m sure this is because they eat proper food, not so called children’s food. Sure, Catherine tries to sneak in extra vegetables here and there but overall they do OK. My son Leo will try anything once. We gave him prawns the other day and he loved them. There was even a time when all he wanted for breakfast was fish – he’s clearly his father’s son! It’s also important for me that my kids recognise their Italian roots, so we eat a lot of Italian in my house, balancing it out with the odd shepherd’s pie and bangers and mash, which I also love.

This book is all about bringing good food into your home. My mission, and yours if you choose to accept it (I’ve always wanted to say that!), is to get families to sit down together to enjoy great food and, more importantly, each other’s company on a regular basis. Sunday lunch in my house is sacrosanct – woe betide anyone who doesn’t show. It’s the one day of the week we all catch up on each other’s news, gossip and the good and not so good bits of the week that was.

My kitchen at home is completely open plan and is in fact an extension of the dining room and playroom, which in turn lead into the garden. When I cook at home there are always least half a dozen people milling around me (as well as assorted cats and dogs) playing, talking, tasting, laughing, bickering and, of course, opening the odd bottle of wine. When the food is ready everyone sits down together and I get a nice warm feeling in my bones, being surrounded by those I love.

As they say in Italy, ‘ La cosa più importante e mangiar in famiglia, così si capisce tutto di tutto’, which roughly translated means, ‘the most important thing in life is to eat together as family: only then can you comprehend what’s really going on the lives of the people closest to you’. I have a funny feeling that these wise words will prove invaluable when my kids are teenagers.”

Frankie Dettari

Marco

“The greatest culinary influence in my life came from having an Italian mother who was a natural-born cook. Her family lived just outside Genoa where I used to spend my summer holidays as a little boy. My earliest food memories are of my mother picking me up from the school gates at midday to go home for lunch. I must have been about five years old. It was only ever the two of us and I’m not sure why my elder brother didn’t join us and instead stayed on for school dinners. Maybe she still regarded me as ‘the baby’ – or perhaps she had already spotted my interest in food. When we ate we’d talk and giggle our way through lunch. I think the reason this had such a lasting impression on me is that those simple meals were always filled with happiness.

Mum cooked simple food intelligently and with great deal of attention to detail. She always used seasonal produce. In winter she’d make hearty soups with root vegetables, pulses and a little rice or pasta with a sprinkling of Parmigiano. In summer we’d have delicate broths studded with podded peas and lots fresh, soft herbs or perhaps a vegetable rice salad or simple spaghetti ‘al burro’ (which remains to this day my favourite pasta). She steered clear of fussy food and heavy sauces. Sometimes lunch would be just a very ripe tomato with a little salt, olive oil and, perhaps, some bread or a piece of cheese. But even a simple snack like this was made with love and a great deal of care and thus still lingers in my memory. Her food philosophy was to buy the best quality that you can afford and to let the flavours speak for themselves.

I believe my mother’s inherent understanding and appreciation of food is a major component in the DNA of most, if not all Italian women. They seem to posses an uncanny knowledge and love for cooking and its ability to nurture. Italians always adhere to the principle that a great meal is not about expensive ingredients. On the contrary, some of the best food in Italy stems from ‘la cucina povera’, ‘the kitchen of the poor’, which understands the importance of allowing Mother Nature to do her job as supplier of our groceries, meat and fish. All that is left for the cook to do is to present her produce in the purest and simplest way.

My mother died when I was six, leaving my father, a chef, to look after three young boys traumatised by their loss and in need of stability and love. My old man wasn’t an outwardly affectionate father but he was always very correct and dependable. He demonstrated his love for us in the way he knew best, through food.

We had very little spare money and fortunately, with hindsight, we were too poor to buy the tinned produce that was so fashionable at the time. Dad had always cooked a little at home, but his forte had been full English breakfasts at weekends. Now that he was stuck with all the cooking he expected all of us to muck in. We were dispatched to pick apples, forage for rhubarb and collect blackberries. As soon as we were old enough to learn how, he also sent us out to shoot rabbits and hares, and to fish for eels, trout or anything else we could land. Nothing went to waste, everything got eaten. We hunted to feed the family, not for leisure and it ignited a passion for hunting and fishing that remains with me to this day. It is my belief that before you can be a great cook you have to understand the providence of food and respect Mother Nature and her bounty.

Today, the most important thing in my life is my kids. Nothing comes before my family. Nothing. In my three Michelin star days I cooked with my ego and not with my heart in order to gain and keep those oh-so-precious stars. I was rarely at home with my kids. They would come to see me between services at my restaurant in the Hyde Park Hotel for about half an hour every day, which wasn’t very satisfactory for any of us. In fact, my children are the reason I took the momentous decision to give back my stars. It was the only way I could spend a lot more time with them. My little ones mean the whole world to me – certainly more than three Michelin stars ever could.

I would like this book to get families back round the dinner table and eating good food. Don’t just buy the book, have a quick flick through, then stick it back on the shelf with all your other glossy celebrity-endorsed cookbooks. This is not what Frankie and I are trying to achieve. Use it, note the recipes that Frankie and I loved as kids, which in turn are loved in equal measure by our own children, and try them out on your kids. Educating your children on the joy of good food and eating well is as important a duty for parents as teaching them good manners and how to love each other.

If this book ends up covered in flour and sticky finger prints and with the odd note in the margin, then and only then will you have realized its true value.”

Marco Pierre White