Tagliatelle ai funghi, in memory of Antonio Carluccio

When I learned that Antonio Carluccio had died I was really sad, I didn't know hime well, but I did meet him twice, and wrote to him once (and got a reply!), he was an inspiration. When I was young and poor and constantly hungry and cold in London I used watch his programmes, and dream of Italy, sun and endless food. I met him in the street there but I was so shy that the only thing I could say was Buongiorno and run away! After writing my first book I emailed him (his publisher) to send him a copy, and got an email reply (signed by him, but I will never know if he wrote it) and a thank you and well done!. Then I met him two years ago at Gusto at the Grand in Auckland, and that was fantastic, I was sitting at his table so I managed to chat a bit with him. What a great memory!

So to honour his legacy I took out my pasta board and went out in the garden, (it was a lovely day), and made some tagliatelle. I even added some flowers to some, just for fun. To make pasta I just use an egg for every 100g of flour, this is good for two people, so double for 4 and so on. Since I have two teenagers I used 300g of flour and 3 eggs :-). 

Then I made a sauce, I had a big pack of dried porcini mushrooms which a soaked, and some other mushrooms, which I cut, and since I didn't have many I added some eggplant, cut and salted (to sweat). If you add eggplant to mushrooms it will absorb the flavour and the texture is a little similar so you can dream that you have lots of mushrooms. I sautéed the fresh mushrooms and eggplant with a little olive oil, chopped parsley and garlic cloves and then added the dried mushrooms and their water, a big bottle of tomato passata,  extra tomato puree and salt to taste. At the end I had a huge pot of sauce, even after I cooked the lot for one hour (to thickens the sauce), I used some for pasta the first day and for a pie the day after.

We had the tagliatelle and mushrooms with Parmigiano, and a glass of red whine, and toasted to Antonio. Goodbye Carluccio, sit tibi terra levis.

Photos and Recipes by Alessandra Zecchini ©

Meeting Antonio Carluccio in Auckland

Last night I met my food hero from the days I was a very young, very poor student in London. I remember I was always cold and hungry and leaving in a grotty place in Kings Cross, and once a week I watched Carluccio on TV and dreamed of home and sun and food. 

Gusto at the Grand, in Sky City, organized a special Christmas lunch and dinner with Antonio Carluccio, I attended the evening with my old friend, and president of the Com.it.es New Zealand Sandro Aduso. Wow we got to sit at Carluccio's table, with name places and all. 

Well, good position for taking photos, right across from Antonio.

The menu was designed by Antonio and by Gusto's talented chef Sean Connelly. Antonio said that Sean really understood Italian food and he was very complimentary, and rightly so, the food at Gusto at the Grand is really really really good!

Well, after a while I got tired to be taking pictures while Sandro was doing all the chatting! Finally Antonio came to sit next to me, yuppy! What a nice man, he even told me that he is writing a vegetarian cookbook!

The guys at Gusto were great though: even if there were enough vegetables for me to eat the also bought me an 'off the menu' vegetarian dish: gnocchi with mushrooms. Remembered to take a photo only at the end… sorry, but they were delicious.

Great evening, thank you to all the team at Gusto at the Grand!

Photos by Alessandra Zecchini and friends ©