This is one of my favourite recipes in the book, due to my current adoration of anything containing chipotle! These are sticky and sweet and spicy and sour  –  a great option to cook up on a weekend and serve with cold beers.

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C fan-forced.
2. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil, then add the ribs and simmer for 30 minutes, skimming off any fat from the surface from time to time.
3. Whisk together the chipotle sauce, agave nectar, lime zest and juice, chilli and a good pinch of salt in a bowl until combined. 
4. Place the ribs in a baking dish, cover with the sauce and roast for 15 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 150°C fan-forced and roast for a further 1–1¼ hours, basting well every 15 minutes, or until the sauce is thick, glossy and caramelised. 
5. Serve hot with lime wedges to the side and coriander scattered on top.

These are incredibly naughty. You can cut them into squares, or into larger pieces and serve them warm for a dinner-party dessert with a good vanilla ice cream. When you are adding the butterscotch layer, don’t worry if it blends into the batter a bit, just spread it out as best you can. The side bits are the best as the caramel goes all sticky and chewy!

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C fan-forced and grease and line the base and sides of a 28 cm × 18 cm × 3 cm slice tin.
2. For the salted butterscotch, place all the ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring often. Reduce the heat to low–medium and simmer for 15–20 minutes until thickened and smooth, then set aside to cool slightly.
3. Place the melted butter, kirsch or vanilla, sugar and eggs in a bowl and mix together. Sift in the flour, baking powder and cocoa and combine well with a wooden spoon. Mix in the milk, then fold in the chocolate and cherries. 
4. Spoon half the batter into the prepared tin and smooth the top. Dollop with salted butterscotch, then top with the remaining batter. Bake for 35–40 minutes or until cooked through and the top is cracked a little. 
5. Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely in the tin before cutting into squares. Dust with icing sugar before serving.

In my mind, Italy is one of the most magical places on this planet. Despite the 24+ hour journey to get there from Sydney, it’s a place I fall in love with more and more each time I visit. The people, the landscapes, the history, the medieval towns, the language – I am smitten by it all, but in particular, the food, as well-noted over the years on my blog.

Italian food is my favourite of all cuisines, and I love exploring all the regional cooking styles. Ergo, for my most recent vacation, rather than head back to my regular haunts of Siena and Tuscany, I decided to travel north to Venice and then onto Bologna to savour the culinary wonders this part of the country is famed for: parmesan cheese, cured meat, pork dishes and the most amazing balsamic vinegars I have ever tasted. 

I started in Venice, a magical city I feel everyone should visit at least once in their lifetime. I’ll never forget seeing the city for the first time on the super-fun water taxi ride from the airport, pinching myself that I was actually there – in Venice! – and marvelling at how utterly bizarre it is to see a city floating on the water. My parents used to have a painting of Venice hanging in our family home that I would gaze at for hours, and now, finally, I had made it here in the flesh!

Visiting Italy in July is always going to mean a lot – note, a LOT – of tourists, so admittedly Venice was jam-packed with people, but it was wonderful to see the men in their striped tops paddling gondolas down the canals, ferrying around tourists who were all manically snapping away at everything with their cameras. I chose to splurge a bit on this trip and booked one of the most beautiful hotels in this fairytale-like city: the famed Gritti Palace. It was divine and offered a romantic view of the Grand Canal and across the water to Santa Maria della Salute; enjoying dinner there by candlelight is a memory I will savour for many years to come. 

Next stop: Bologna. What an incredible city, which sadly is often overlooked by visitors to Italy. I was a little underwhelmed initially, but when night fell, this university town came to life. I loved it! It’s not half as touristy or expensive as Venice, and I got a very chilled and relaxed vibe from the town. 

I decided to book myself on a food tour to get the best out of the city, the home of ragu alla bolognese. After the somewhat rude awakening of having to rise at 6 a.m. (on my holiday!), I was picked up at the hotel by a driver and joined seventeen others for an incredible day spent visiting a parmesan factory, prosciutto manufacturer and, best of all as I adore the stuff, an authentic Modena-based family-run boutique balsamic vinegar business. This was the highlight of my trip and even inspired me to fork out a few hundred dollars for a 100-year-old bottle of balsamic, which I bring out for special dinner parties at home. I learnt how 99 per cent of most balsamic vinegars – even the ones you see in gourmet shops for over $100 per bottle – are not, in fact, ‘proper’ balsamic, as the real stuff must be bottled in the authentic Modena balsamic bottle, and must only contain 100 per cent pure grape must, without any additional ingredients.

The tour company was a hubby-and-wife set-up; the host, Alessandro, was crazy passionate, extremely knowledgeable and witty. He guided us expertly through a jam-packed, yet leisurely day – the highlight of which was a big group lunch where the food and wine flowed. Take it from me, a food tour is a must if you visit this area.

From there I headed south to check out Capri and the Amalfi Coast, a place I had long heard about but never seen. After the fastest, scariest train ride/rocket journey in my life (no kidding, I think we hit 400 kilometres per hour at one point), I found myself in Naples in all its crazy glory. Sadly, however, it was just for a few hours (I will be back with my camera as the photo ops looked abundant), as then it was straight onto a ferry to Capri.

Oh. My. God. Did someone say nirvana? Capri is stunning. I felt like I was in a James Bond movie; it was so colourful and incredibly pretty. I took the cable car up the hill to Piazza Umberto, the little town square located in the historic centre of Capri. Buzzing with people (all dressed in obligatory white) and the odd glamorous wedding, I was in awe of its beauty. I made my way up the narrow, winding white-walled streets, passing enormous Capri lemons tied in bunches outside shops, to find the hotel where I’d be staying for the next two nights; the uber-stylish Capri Tiberio Palace. It was very chic, and sparked my current obsession with hand-painted patterned tiles – they adorned the balcony of my room and I am now totally obsessed with them! A little further afield, I discovered the quieter and even more beautiful Anacapri, my favourite part of the island. It is a photographer’s dream, with abundant bright pink and purple flowers cascading down chalky white walls. 

Of all the amazing places I visited on this trip, the one that stood out over all the rest was Positano, the most picturesque village nestled in a bay south of Naples, where the buildings look as though they’ve been stacked higgledy-piggledy, one above the other, rising up the hillside. I met a Canadian woman there who said she’s been back every year for the past twelve years, and I can understand why. As I sat on the ferry approaching Positano from Capri, I must have taken 1,985 photos as the boat pulled into the harbour. Never in my life have I seen such outstanding beauty. The various bright colours of the buildings crammed together climbing up the hill is utterly glorious. 

Journey with Frank Camorra as he searches for the traditional recipes of Andalusia in the south of Spain – a land of ancient cities, whitewashed villages, and plains planted with olive groves and vineyards. The largest and southernmost of Spain's regions, this is a place where cultures and cuisines have always collided and mingled.

Frank meets the food and wine producers, farmers, fishermen, chefs and cooks who share the recipes they have cooked in their kitchens for generations. Along the way, he takes in riotous spring festivals, lively markets and peaceful sherry bodegas, and reveals his favourite places to eat, drink and stay. From an olive picker's breakfast to cuttlefish in saffron sauce and the smoky lamb skewers called pinchitos morunos, MoVida Solera is a celebration of Andalusian food and culture.

There are a handful of bars in Seville’s Plaza del Salvador, a small square opposite the baroque Iglesia del Salvador, or Church of the Saviour. I head here every time I am in town – for the bars, not the church. They now know me, not by name but by reputation: the big Australian chef and his ever-hungry crew. I come here for the delicious buñuelos de bacalao. Deep-fried yet light, fishy yet meaty, they are a good way to use up the lesser parts of the cod.

Method

1. Wash the excess salt off the salt cod fillet, then place in a large bowl. Cover with water and leave to soak for 36 hours, changing the water three times.
2. Place the milk and the drained cod in a small saucepan over medium heat. Simmer for 10 minutes or until the cod is cooked. Transfer the cod to a plate and leave until cool enough to handle. Remove and discard the skin and any remaining small bones, and break the flesh into flakes. Reserve the milk.
3. Melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion, garlic and bay leaves and cook for 6 minutes or until the onion is soft and translucent. Add the flour and cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, for 2 minutes or until the flour begins to colour. Pour in the reserved milk a little at a time, mixing it into the flour. Once all the milk has been added, cook the sauce for 10 minutes, stirring continuously, until it is as thick as soft polenta and the flavour of the raw flour has been cooked out. Add the flaked cod to the pan and stir in well, then remove from the heat.
4. Break in the eggs, one at a time, mixing them in well, then stir in the herbs and lemon zest. Pour the mixture into a shallow baking tray and leave to cool before covering with plastic film and chilling in the refrigerator for 3 hours.
5. Pour the olive oil into a heavy-based saucepan or flat-bottomed wok and heat to 170°C or until a cube of bread dropped into the oil browns in 15 seconds.
6. Remove the salt cod mixture from the refrigerator. Take a heaped tablespoon of the mixture and push it off the spoon into the oil with your finger. Working in batches of 6 fritters at a time, deep-fry the fritters for 3 minutes or until golden, crisp and cooked through.
7. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towel. Season with salt and serve hot. 

Sweets and pastries treats have been served from the splendid counter at Confitería Rufino since 1875. Owner Pilar Rodríguez stands proudly in front of the carved wooden displays and mirrored cabinets filled with eel-shaped sweets made of marzipan and others made with egg yolks and walnuts cooked in sugar. But one of her biggest sellers are honey-glazed pestiños, little folds of short pastry just rolled and deep-fried. In some parts of Andalusia, they are simply dusted with icing sugar. In other parts they are sprinkled with sesame seeds, and in Cádiz are made with sherry. They were once only made for Holy Week and Christmas but are now often made all year around.

1. Sift the flour into a stainless steel bowl. Place the fennel, cumin and salt on top of the flour, but resist the temptation to mix them in.
2. Heat the 200 ml of olive oil in a small heavy-based saucepan over medium heat until very hot. Pour the hot oil over the flour and spices in the bowl, then immediately pour in the wine, taking care to avoid getting splashed by the oil. Mix well with a wooden spoon to form a smooth dough, but be careful not to over-work it or the pastry will toughen. Roll the pastry into a ball and cover with plastic film, then leave to rest for an hour.
3. Roll out the pastry on a cool well-floured benchtop until it is about 2–3 mm thick. Cut into discs using an 8 cm crinkle-edged round pastry cutter (or a jar lid about 8 cm in diameter). Brush the edge of half of each pastry disc with cold water, then bring the opposite edge over until slightly overlapping and pinch together to hold in place. Place the pestiños on a lightly floured tray or plate.
4. Place the honey and sugar in a small heavy-based saucepan with 100 ml of water and bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Reduce the heat to low–medium and simmer for 5 minutes or until it thickens a little. Keep warm.
5. Pour the olive oil for deep-frying into a heavy-based saucepan or wok and heat to 170°C or until a cube of bread dropped into the oil browns in 15 seconds.
6. Working in batches, fry the pestiños for 2–3 minutes, turning occasionally, until crisp and brown. Using a slotted spoon, remove and drain on a wire rack set over a double layer of paper towel. While they are still warm, bathe the pestiños in the honey syrup, then leave on the rack to drain and set for 20 minutes.
7. Serve at room temperature with hot coffee or Spanish brandy.

I like to think of gazpachos as loosely related cold soups that have pounded bread and garlic at the root of their family tree. Added to this could be nuts, often vegetables or perhaps fruit – one of chef Dani García’s signature dishes in the past has been cherry gazpacho with anchovy. Ajoblanco is a deliciously refreshing pick-me-up and is usually made with almonds, but this version uses pine nuts, which are native to the Mediterranean coast. Keep a jug of this in the fridge on a hot summer’s day when family and friends are around.

Method

1. Break the bread into pieces about the size of a walnut. Place in a shallow bowl, cover with cold water and leave to stand for 5 minutes.
2. Use your hands to firmly squeeze out the bread, then place in a blender. Add the pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, sherry vinegar and salt and blend thoroughly to form a very smooth paste. Add 1.5 litres of cold water and blend again until smooth and velvety.
3. Chill in the fridge for 2–3 hours before serving. Garnish with a few drops of extra virgin olive oil.

A huge arch fills the early evening sky. Lit with thousands of light bulbs, it glows gold against the darkening blue heavens. Hanging from it are tens of thousands of lanterns that bathe the fairground in soft, colourful light and illuminate the promenading crowds, who have come to eat, drink, dance and sing well into the night and, for some, into the next morning. This is La Feria.

Every April, the city lurches into a week of bacchanalian celebration, when hundreds of casetas or marquees are erected on the fairground on the other bank of the Guadalquivir. At the back of each marquee is a small kitchen where plates of tapas are prepared, perhaps fried fish, perhaps tortilla, but more likely pinchitos morunos, spiced lamb skewers. The spectacle is the crowd itself, clothed in Andalusian traditional costume. The women look stunning, dressed in body-hugging flamenco dresses, the men walking proudly beside them sporting their traje corto (a short jacket) along with tight trousers and riding boots. The children dress in diminutive versions of the same. It is as much an exposition of local culture as it is a party. This rather beautiful display of humanity is juxtaposed with La Calle del Infierno, or Hell Street, on the other side of the Feria – hectares of theme-park rides and teenagers drinking rebujitos, a potent mix of dry sherry and lemonade.

The Feria de Abril kicks off with a street parade of traditional horses and carriages, which also signals the start of the spring bullfighting season. Seville’s bullring is the oldest in Spain, with construction beginning in the early 1700s. However, the banning of bullfighting by King Carlos III in the late 1700s halted the building work, and it was only after his reign ended that the stadium was completed – the result is a mélange of different styles unified by its gold and red ochre colouring. The bullfighters make their way into the ring through a phalanx of fans. Bullfighters are revered in Spain, their artful heroics when pitted against a tonne of angry bull making them demi-gods. While there is no escaping the barbaric fact that no bull makes it out of the bullring alive, there is the chance the bullfighter may not either. So, despite the ecstatic adoration that surrounds them, bullfighters seem oblivious to the festivities, instead carrying with them a dark cloud of fatalism and certain aloofness. Perhaps they know they may be closer to heaven than the clamouring masses around them.

Jane de Teliga had it all – a glamorous and fulfilling career as style director for Australia's best-loved magazine, a happy family life and a beautiful home in Sydney's stunning eastern suburbs. But when empty nest syndrome struck, she suddenly found herself wondering what it all meant. Who was she when she wasn't being defined by her career and motherhood? To find out, she did what many people long to do - sold the house, left her job and went to try her luck in Paris. Along the way she discovered meditation, yoga and the inescapable truth of the Buddhist saying: 'Everywhere you go, there you are'. Read an edited extract from her book Running Away from Home.

Bright shiny day: Sydney Heads from Watson’s Bay on a dazzling Sydney afternoon.

One dreary, sad winter’s day I found myself at Sydney’s unprepossessing international airport, two suitcases in hand, clutching my beautiful daughter Emily, struggling to breathe as I said goodbye to everything. The enormity of what I was doing was shimmering like a mirage somewhere at the back of my brain. ‘Let’s pretend I’m just going on holidays,’ I croaked, ‘I just can’t say goodbye.’ And weaving their way through that brain mirage in big letters were the words, ‘What the fuck are you doing, Jane! You’re leaving your girls! The most important thing in your life! You’re leaving your family, your friends, your job and your home. Are you completely bloody crazy?’

Family portrait: Emily, me and Madeleine in Sydney, 2010.

After a final clutch I made a strangled dash into the immigration hall. A middle-aged, middle-class Australian woman in her comfy velour tracksuit pants struggling to regain her composure, basically making a run for it; a run towards a new life.

This is the part where I say, ‘I had it all’. Well, yes, I did but I didn’t. A pretty little cottage in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, ten minutes from the beach, the smell of sweet jasmine wafting on a warm night, a palm tree swishing in the breeze in my tiny courtyard – my home. .  .  But until you’ve experienced the empty-nest syndrome you will probably wonder what the problem was.

I still had my all-consuming job as Style Director on the Australian publishing icon, The Australian Women’s Weekly. And it had taken up eight full-on years of my life while my girls were growing up. Being the style director meant that my working life involved organising, creating and directing the photographic images that enlivened the magazine. God, my working life was marvellous but after nearly eight years – hello burnout. Plucking ideas from my head, creating a concept and making it happen with a fantastic photographer and team was the best job anyone could have had and I loved it. But it finally wore me out, plundering my brain of every creative idea. In the end, it refused to cough up anything any more and I realised I needed some serious rebooting for myself and for new inspiration. Europe was the place that beckoned.

On the beach: The sublime Broome shoot with Megan Gale and Chris Colls.

Whoever I was had been submerged a long time ago in the frantic pace of just keeping everything going – juggling a really demanding full-on career while bringing up my children (albeit with the unstinting help of Damien, my very responsible ex-husband). The constant struggle with myself, the questions about who I was and how I wanted to live the rest of my life ran round and round in my brain like a hamster on a wheel.

And so an idea gradually grew in my febrile mind, it grew and groaned, it fluttered and festered, it skipped and it shuddered and it became a plan. I was going to run away from home. For so long I’d had the feeling that I wanted to live in Europe again. At twenty-six, I went to Europe, where I lived for two years, learning Italian in Perugia, and then I was awarded a scholarship to study at the British Museum, spending a year in London. I loved living in Europe. Everywhere you turned there was beauty, from incredible buildings to glorious landscapes, from simply delicious food (in Italy, not in 1970s London!), to divinely covetable clothes (I still remember seeing a trench coat lined with rabbit fur, in a window in Perugia and thinking it was the chicest thing I’d ever seen).

Style director at work: Me styling a shoot about celebrity stylists for the Australian Women’s Weekly. Photo: Juli Balla

And one could never get to the end of it; there was and is always the promise of more. At the risk of sounding precious, the search for beauty has always been my pole star, the navigation point for the way I live my life. I’d always longed to go back and live in Europe, and now there was no reason not to. There was nothing stopping me.

First, I had to ask my girls. One day when the three of us were together, I very tentatively asked, ‘I’ve been a good mummy, can I go now please?’ Emily looked alarmed. I explained haltingly that I wanted to live in Europe and that I thought I might live in Paris and – it all tumbled out. Finally Madeleine said, ‘Go, Mum, otherwise you’ll drive us mad. Just do it.’ I had their blessing! Well, more or less. I reasoned that their caring father was in Sydney and so was my mother who they adored, so I wasn’t abandoning them, was I?

La Tour Eiffel at dusk.

I put my pretty house up for sale . . .  and I moved into a shabby but great flat that I rented right above my mother (oh yes), in a down-at-heel, liver-coloured brick art deco block, minutes from the beach. It was cathartic and prepared me well for a life lived with much less. I invested all my money, being told that I would never have to work again . . . yippee! There it was, all in place, my ‘running away from home’ money. I bought a ticket to Europe and packed two suitcases with some clothes (which would mostly prove all wrong for my new life), my techno lifelines – MacBook, iPod and iPhone, my trusty camera, photographs of my girls, a few books, the odd jewel and way too many shoes. Finally, unbelievably, the fateful day came and it was time to GO. I found myself at the airport walking out of my life. And interestingly, like many of the important moments of one’s life, there is no photograph of my leaving. Just the poignant memory of clutching Emily goodbye (my other daughter Maddy was in New York) and walking through the airport, overwhelmed by sadness and fear but also elation and anticipation, thinking, ‘Oh. My. God. I’ve done it.’

Yes, I did it. I had finally run away from home.

Running Away from Home - Jane de Teliga

Spanish home cooks rarely use a chopping board to cut vegetables. Instead, they simply hold the vegetable in one hand and the knife in the other, then cut directly into a bowl or pan. It sounds funny, but this cutting technique affects the flavour and texture of the food. Take potatoes: the slight twisting motion of the knife causes the potato to break, leaving a rough and ragged surface, which allows more starch into the cooking liquid, and this in turn thickens the stock.

Heirloom Vegetables: A Guide to Their History and Varieties is a new book by Simon Rickard. Simon is best known as the former head gardener at the Diggers Club, in which role he oversaw the magnificent gardens of Heronswood and the Garden of St Erth until 2009. Until 2012 he collaborated with restaurateur Annie Smithers, designing and operating her kitchen garden in country Victoria. These days, Simon works as a garden designer, gardening coach and garden communicator.

Simon states: ‘Heirloom vegetables were a revelation to me. Right off the bat they appealed to my sense of aesthetics and my love of the quirky and, above all, they appealed to my tastebuds. But the more I got to know heirlooms the more I began to appreciate them for their stories. It turns out that their stories are our stories, too. Thousands of years of human history are written in their genes if we only know how to look for it.’

Simon Rickard

Turk's turban pumpkin

Heirloom vegetables have been enjoying a renaissance since the 1980s. With their often unusual appearance, surprising flavours and multifarious culinary uses, heirlooms have become the darlings of the horticultural and foodie sets. They have breathed new life into gardening and cookery, encouraging a whole new generation to take up those noble pursuits.

These days, heirloom vegetables are so frequently encountered at farmers’ markets and on the tables of fine dining establishments that it is hard to imagine we nearly lost them completely. Yet until their revival three decades ago, these precious horticultural jewels teetered on the edge of extinction.

Mantovano Cabbage

Since the 1950s our society has abdicated responsibility for its food supply to agribusinesses and middlemen. It was their business models which came to dictate which vegetable varieties farmers would be allowed to grow and which varieties people would be able to eat. Such decisions were taken out of the hands of food producers and consumers. As a result, vegetable breeding businesses became obsessed with homogeneity. Seed companies bred dozens of new hybrid vegetables each year but, far from giving consumers more choice, they began to converge on a single point of uniformity.

Many of us remember the days, not so long ago, when you could buy any kind of tomato as long as it was red, round and tasteless, any kind of lettuce as long as it was ‘Iceberg’, and any kind of cucumber as long as it was eight inches long and the prescribed shade of dark green.

Sweet pea flower

Then heirloom vegetables came along and reawakened our jaded eyes and palates. Far from being alarmed, we were fascinated by them. Heirlooms reminded us that food could be a complete sensory experience. Heirloom vegetables were beautiful to behold and delicious in unique ways; they had unusual names and interesting stories to tell about their provenance or culinary use. Heirloom vegetables snapped us out of our stupor. They woke us up to what was happening to our food under our very noses. So what exactly are heirloom vegetables and why are they special?

Loosely speaking, heirloom vegetables are varieties which pre-date WWII. As the name suggests, heirloom vegetables have been handed down through families or communities for generations. Just like your nanna’s wedding ring or your granddad’s fob watch, or a beloved local custom like the Birdsville Races or the Melbourne Cup, heirloom vegetables are cherished as precious cultural touchstones. They mean something to the people who grow and eat them. Heirloom vegetable varieties have been selected over many generations with two aims in mind. First, they have been selected for their culinary attributes: their flavours, textures and usefulness for specific purposes in the kitchen, such as bottling, drying, and eating fresh. Naturally, different cultures have their own culinary preferences, and this in itself has driven an enormous amount of diversity.

The second attribute for which heirlooms have been selected is to grow well under particular climatic conditions. For example, the onion Tropeana Rossa Lunga was selected in Sicily to thrive in the hot, dry conditions there, while Ailsa Craig was selected in Scotland to cope with that country’s cool, wet summers. This means that there is an heirloom variety suited to just about any set of local conditions.

Jaune Flamme is a tomato that ripens reliably in cool summer districts. Gold Rush is a lettuce that resists bolting in hot, dry climates. Modern hybrid vegetables are by their nature one-size-fits-all (or, perhaps more accurately, one-size-fits-none).

Violetta artichoke

For example, the French like small, crisp radishes for eating fresh while the Japanese like huge, solid radishes for pickling and cooking. On the other hand, the French like enormous pumpkins while the Japanese prefer pumpkins that fit in the palm of your hand. Heirloom vegetables are exquisitely beautiful, sublimely delicious, fascinating and unique; one can easily run out of superlatives when describing these masterpieces of human ingenuity. Far from being moribund museum pieces, heirloom vegetables are still being created by a vibrant network of individual breeders and organisations around the world. Vegetables and people have come a long way together, and I believe we have a lot further yet to go.

Viroflay spinach 

Heirloom Vegetables: A Guide to Their History and Varieties by Simon Rickard

Here is a parody to pay tribute to the camp nature of Carmen Miranda, the infamous Brazilian singer/dancer who emerged as a Hollywood film star in the 1940s, and that crazy fruit-bowl hat that became her signature. Like Carmen, this is a bombshell, only an edible and immensely moreish one, with its contrast of dark red fruit, wicked aerated chocolate and crisp meringue. The aerated chocolate cream needs to be made the day before serving and refrigerated overnight in the canister.

Created to celebrate Universal’s fifth birthday in 2012, I wanted to showcase strawberries at their juiciest best and to marry them with rhubarb, a quintessential winter ingredient, to contrast the flavours of both fruit. My aim was to visually to mask the soft, voluptuous pink and white centre with fine sheaths of white chocolate, like sheer lingerie over a nude body – hence the name. A happy birthday indeed!

While it may take its initial inspiration from the commercial ice-cream confection on a stick, this dessert is an entirely grown-up affair, paying tribute to my sexuality and gay culture in Sydney and beyond. Gaytime in its various forms has been a constant feature on my restaurant menus since the mid-nineties. It really came into its own at Universal in 2007, where it achieved iconic status, well before it was the dessert that determined the winner of the 2012 season of MasterChef Australia that featured in the final challenge. That clinched it, taking this dessert into a whole new realm altogether, where it gained an even wider recognition for the seemingly unbeatably sexy combination of flavours. Its popularity saw people queuing at Universal to get their fix until the day we closed. It certainly was nuts! The comforting flavours here are universally appealing, so having a Gaytime has become synonymous with desire and a benchmark for excellence – gotta love that!

Method

1. Line a baking tray with baking paper.
2. Place the caster sugar, glucose and water in a large heavy-based saucepan over high heat until the mixture comes to the boil, then cook for 10–12 minutes or until it reaches a caramel colour.
3. Carefully add the bicarbonate of soda, then whisk quickly as the hot mixture will expand immediately. Pour onto the lined tray and leave to cool completely.
4. Break into large chunks and store in an airtight container until required. (Honeycomb will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week.)

1. Heat the milk and cream in a small heavy-based saucepan over low heat to simmering point.
2. Using an electric mixer, whisk the egg yolks and caster sugar in a heatproof bowl for 5 minutes or until pale and creamy. Slowly add the hot milk mixture, then whisk to combine.
3. Sit the bowl over a bain marie, making sure the bowl does not touch the simmering water, and cook the mixture to a custard consistency, stirring continuously until it coats the back of the spoon (it should register 80°C on a probe or sugar thermometer). Strain the custard through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean heatproof bowl, then cool quickly over a bowl of ice, whisking constantly to keep the custard aerated as it cools.
4. Churn the cooled custard in an ice-cream machine following the manufacturer’s instructions until firm. Fold the honeycomb through the churned ice cream. Spread crossways into one half of a 25 cm × 16 cm base × 3 cm-deep slice tin; the caramel ice cream will fill the other half of the tin. Cover with plastic film and freeze until required. (Ice cream will keep in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 1 week.)

Note: Simple to make, honeycomb can be used in so many ways – crush it to sprinkle over a creamy mousse, break it into bite-sized pieces and coat with melted chocolate (better than anything you will buy in a packet), or serve small chunks with your favourite ice cream.

1. You will need to make the custard base and caramel simultaneously so both are ready at the same time. Heat the cream and milk in a small heavy-based saucepan over low heat to simmering point.
2. Using an electric mixer, whisk the egg yolks and 90 g of the caster sugar in a heatproof bowl for 5 minutes or until pale and creamy. Slowly add the hot milk mixture, then whisk to combine.
3. Sit the bowl over a bain marie, making sure the bowl does not touch the simmering water, and cook the mixture to a custard consistency, stirring continuously until it coats the back of the spoon (it should register 80°C on a probe or sugar thermometer).
4. Meanwhile, place the remaining 300 g sugar and the water in a heavy-based saucepan over medium heat and bring to the boil, shaking the pan occasionally but not stirring to ensure the sugar dissolves before the mixture comes to the boil. Continue to boil for 10–12 minutes or until the sugar syrup reaches a deep caramel colour.
5. As soon as the caramel is ready, add a ladleful of the custard to the caramel in the pan, then gently shake the pan to combine; this loosens the caramel. Immediately pour the hot caramel mixture into the custard base and whisk until smooth and combined. Strain the caramel custard through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean heatproof bowl, then cool quickly over a bowl of ice, whisking constantly to keep the custard aerated as it cools.
6. Churn the caramel custard in an ice-cream machine following the manufacturer’s instructions until firm. Spread the caramel ice cream into the other half of the 25 cm × 16 cm slice tin, alongside the honeycomb ice cream. Cover with plastic film and freeze for at least 2 hours or until required. (Ice cream will keep in an airtight container in the freezer for up to 1 week.)

1. Heat the milk and 125 ml of the cream in a small heavy-based saucepan over low heat to simmering point.
2. Using an electric mixer, whisk the egg yolks and caster sugar in a heatproof bowl for 5 minutes or until pale and creamy. Slowly add the hot milk mixture, then whisk to combine. Sit the bowl over a bain marie, making sure the bowl does not touch the simmering water, and cook the mixture to a custard consistency, stirring continuously until it coats the back of the spoon (it should register 80°C on a probe or sugar thermometer). Add the softened gelatine and stir to dissolve, then cool quickly over a bowl of ice until it registers 45°C on the probe or sugar thermometer.
3. Meanwhile, place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a bain marie, making sure the bowl does not touch the simmering water, then heat until it has melted and registers 45°C on the probe or sugar thermometer.
4. Fold the melted chocolate through 150 g of the cooled custard base until combined. (The remaining custard base can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 weeks.) Strain the chocolate custard through a fine-mesh sieve into a clean bowl, then cool quickly over a bowl of ice, whisking constantly to keep the custard aerated as it cools.
5. Whip the remaining 225 ml cream until soft peaks form. Fold the whipped cream into the cooled chocolate custard. Transfer to an airtight container, then seal and refrigerate for 3 hours or until firm.

1. Heat the cream, glucose and vanilla bean in a small heavy-based saucepan over low heat to simmering point.
2. Meanwhile, heat a clean and dry heavy-based saucepan over high heat for 1 minute or until hot. Add the caster sugar and cook without stirring for 8–10 minutes or until a dry caramel forms. Immediately add the warm cream mixture and cook for 5 minutes, stirring until combined. Add the butter and stir to melt and combine. Remove and discard the vanilla bean. Remove the pan from the heat and leave to cool completely.
3. When ready to serve, mix the chopped hazelnuts and vanilla salt into the cold caramel.

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C. While the oven is heating, place a baking tray upside-down inside to become very hot.
2. Heat the fondant and glucose in a small heavy-based saucepan over medium heat until the mixture registers 180°C on a probe or sugar thermometer. Add the chocolate and stir until well combined to form a smooth paste. Spread onto a silicone mat on a baking tray. Using a rolling pin, roll the wafer mixture until 5 mm-thick. Set aside for 10 minutes or until completely cooled and hardened.
3. Break the wafer mixture into small pieces. Using a mortar and pestle, break down to roughly 1 cm pieces; this prevents the mixture from heating while it is blitzed. Transfer to a blender (or use a Thermomix on speed 8–10) and grind to a fine powder.
4. Sift ½ cup of the powder at a time though a fine-mesh sieve onto a silicone mat on a baking tray, using a rectangular 20 cm × 7.5 cm acetate template for shape, to form a 2 mm-thick layer; the powder should just be level with the thickness of the template.
5. Place an index finger at one end of the template to hold it in place, then gently lift off the opposite end, taking care not to touch the powder. Lift the template away completely. Take the hot upside-down baking tray from the oven and place it upside-down on a heatproof work surface.
6. Gently slide the mat onto the hot upside-down tray and allow the powder to melt completely; this will take 60–90 seconds. If the powder doesn’t meld together completely, place the tray in the oven for 15–30 seconds, watching carefully to ensure the powder doesn’t burn.
7. Run a small right-angle palette knife over the wafer to check the consistency – you want it to be set and cool enough to be pliable and easy to roll, but not hot enough that it stretches easily. Lift up one end of the wafer by gently flicking it with the palette knife. Lay a 5.5 cm base-diameter plastic squeez-y bottle over the hot wafer and roll it up around the bottle to make a cylinder. Gently press the edges around the bottle onto the hot mat to seal them together, then gently ease the cylinder wafer off the bottle.
8. Repeat this process 7 times with the remaining powder so you have 8 cylinder wafers in total. Leave to cool.
9. Line a large airtight container with baking paper, then stand the wafer collars upright in one layer and seal until ready to serve. (The wafers need to be made on the day of serving.)

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C.
2. Using an electric mixer with a paddle attachment, mix the caster sugar, ground almonds, flour, cocoa, butter and salt on medium speed until combined to form a coarse, sand-like texture the consistency of crumble; it should not come together like dough.
3. Spread the crumble mixture on a silicone mat on a baking tray to form a 1 cm-thick layer; it won’t be smooth but will look a bit like coarse breadcrumbs. Bake for 15 minutes or until crisp and fragrant; it should taste cooked.
4. Leave the crumble on the mat on the tray to cool to room temperature, then store in an airtight container until required. (The crumble can be made in advance and stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.)

1. Blitz the chocolate crumble, savoiardi, nougat and honeycomb in a heavy-duty blender (or use a Thermomix on speed 8) to form fine crumbs. Transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate until required; this prevents it from clumping.

1. Place a spoonful of honeycomb nougat dust on the centre of each serving plate, then flatten it into a 6.5 cm diameter circle. (It should fit a chocolate wafer collar standing upright, leaving a border showing around the edge; do not add the wafer collar yet.)
2. Using a round 4.5 cm pastry cutter, cut the honeycomb ice cream into 8 rounds. Repeat with the caramel ice cream.
3. Place a round of honeycomb ice cream on the centre of the dust on each plate. Dip each round of caramel ice cream into 3 g of the dark chocolate pearls to cover the surface, then place on top of the honeycomb ice cream.
4. Gently ease a chocolate wafer collar over each ice-cream stack to encase it, then fill with a couple of small chunks of the ice cream (about 1 teaspoon in total) if required, to bring the ice cream to 1 cm below the top of each wafer collar.
5. Spoon a little salted hazelnut caramel evenly over the top of the ice cream on each plate to cover, filling to the top of each collar.
6. Place a spoonful of honeycomb nougat dust over the salted hazelnut caramel and top with a quenelle of hazelnut chocolate mousse. Serve immediately. 

Memories! Memories of youth. Memories of my roots. Memories of the smells coming from the kitchen. The nostalgic, particular flavour and aroma of a dish my mother and grandmother used to prepare for the family, made with a passion that inspired so much tenderness, love and serenity. Yes, we were eating because we were hungry, and their cooking certainly wasn’t gastronomy, but in later years I understood that the celebration of the produce of each season was a clear reminder of civility and culture. And I came to realise that cooking is one of the most civil of pleasures!

It is this respect for the freshness of ingredients, regionality and tradition – and, of course, my passion for food and love of people – that inspired me to write this book. Not to mention the fact that I feel as if the more we experiment to find something new, the more we discover that what we actually yearn for are those old traditional flavours of our grandmothers’ cooking. As we become increasingly preoccupied with the provenance and freshness of our ingredients, we get closer and closer to the real peasant way of looking at food, where hardly anything is bought, because everything comes from just outside the front or back door.

And so it was with my family. I remember watching my father come back from our vegetable garden on a hot summer’s day, carrying some wonderful tomatoes, cucumber, basil and red onions. He never cooked, but with these simple, incredibly fresh ingredients he made a stunning salad. Of course, as a kid I refused to eat it, only appreciating it many years later, when I put it on the menu at Lucio’s as insalata di papà.

The classic Cucina Italiana, which is essentially a regional cuisine, developed through centuries of political change, poverty and domination by other cultures. But probably the most significant impact came with the discovery of the New World, and the subsequent introduction of potatoes, tomatoes, chillies, capsicums, corn and a variety of beans to the markets. All ingredients that go very well with Italian cooking, to the extent that now, two centuries later, it feels as if they belong more to Italy than the Americas!

The south went more for tomatoes, chillies and capsicums, which grow better in the warmer weather and marry wonderfully with their Mediterranean-style dishes. The north went for potatoes, corn and beans, which generations of creative cooks have transformed into gnocchi, polenta and nourishing soups, all perfectly suited to the cooler climate. But the thing that unites the north and the south is passion: passion for quality ingredients; passion for pasta; and passion for conviviality. The regional diversity, extreme simplicity and seasonality is what makes La Cucina Italiana so special, and so loved and appreciated the world over.

As more and more people are discovering or re-discovering the pleasures of cooking, the kitchen and dining room are again becoming our chosen places to entertain. To my mind, there are very few people who can invent something completely new in the kitchen – and even then, most of the time they are just rearranging traditional recipes. So, let’s leave our inventiveness aside for now and concentrate on the Italian regional cuisine that took centuries to perfect . . . and it is perfect!

Traditional Italian food is unsurpassed for creating incredible flavours using simple, local produce chosen and cooked with care. Always serve good bread with an Italian meal, and leave it on the table so everyone can help themselves at any stage of the meal. I am a firm believer that bread should be made by the fornai (bakers), not at home, so seek out a traditional Italian bakery, and visit often.

For me, the art of cooking has always been inseparable from the art of hospitality, and over more than 30 years at Lucio’s, we have welcomed artists to our restaurant and proudly hung their works on our walls. So when we started gathering recipes for a new cookbook, it seemed only natural that art would share the pages with food. The artists were each given a chapter or other element of the book, and were then free to respond to the recipes and stories in any way they liked. The results exceeded anything I could have hoped for. The title I have chosen for the book then, The Art of Traditional Italian, is not only in recognition of this extraordinary collaboration with so many of my artist friends, but is also in homage to the early cookbooks like La scienza in cucina e l’arte di mangiare bene (‘Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well’) and a time when cooking first started to be considered an art.

My hope is that the traditional food shared in these pages will not only be respected and remembered, but also that it will inspire you to pass the recipes on to the next generation with pride and love, so we can build up new memories. Enjoy the book.

And here we are at the cacciucco, probably the most well-known fish soup. It originated in Livorno, the port city in northern Tuscany, before being adopted by the town of Viareggio, the poshest of the summer resorts on the Tuscan continuation of the Ligurian Riviera. 

The name comes from the Turkish word kuciuk, meaning ‘small things’. According to legend, it was first prepared when a Livornese fisherman’s boat was overturned in a huge tempest and he drowned, leaving his wife and children in poverty. His hungry children went to the port and asked the other fishermen for some food. Everyone gave something: octopus, calamari, some black mussels, some little bony, unsellable fish . . . The children took it all home to their mother, who prepared a soup with it. The neighbours were so taken with the beautiful aroma that they went to the woman and asked her what it was. And so cacciucco was born, and it is said there are as many types of fish in the cacciucco as there are ‘c’s in its spelling!

This tasty and easy-to-prepare dish is a speciality of the Valle d’Aosta region in the very north of Italy. It takes advantage of the superior dairy products of this verdant area, including butter and fontina cheese. Although it’s now popular all over the world, and made in different ways, this is the traditional recipe: veal on the bone, filled with fontina, crumbed and cooked in butter. The only addition permitted is white or black truffle.

Method

1. Trim the fat from the veal cutlets and use a small sharp knife to make a pocket in each one, to hold the cheese filling. Flatten them a little with a meat mallet. Cut the fontina into thin slices and place inside the pockets. To close the pockets, lightly beat the edges with the mallet and press down with your fingers to seal, so they won’t open during cooking.
2. Season the meat with salt. Put the flour, egg and breadcrumbs into separate shallow bowls. Coat each cutlet in the flour, shaking off any excess, then dip in the egg, allowing any excess to fall back in the bowl. Finally, coat well with the breadcrumbs, pressing them on with your fingers.
3. Heat the butter in a large heavy-based frying pan over medium heat. When hot, place the cutlets in the pan, making sure they do not overlap, and cook until golden on both sides – about 5–6 minutes in total should be enough. Drain on paper towels, garnish with rosemary sprigs and serve hot . . . No lemon!