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specialist produce, along with cavolo nero, the black kale from Tuscany. I sow broad beans, peas, French and runner beans and borlotti beans (which are expensive to buy, that is, if you can find them). Start the borlottis off under glass in March to give them the long growing season they need, then plant them out in May for a September crop.

      The most challenging Italian ingredient I attempted to grow was radicchio ‘Rosso di Treviso Tardivo’. Tying up the summer and autumn growth of leaves to ‘blanch’ the inner hearts was my inexperienced way of trying to figure out how to grow this specialist plant. It was successful to a degree in that during the winter I dared to untie the plant and peep at the leaves within: there were, huddled in the dark heart, beautiful cold-white spines dividing the dark wine-red leaf, crisp and dense and beginning to fold like a death at the tips.

      Tomatoes: last year we grew an avenue of them in terracotta pots, tying the stems to string attached to the roof of the glasshouse. Francesco had instructed me to fill the glasshouses with them, so we did. He also suggested I ask his housekeeper for any old linen sheets we could tear up and use to wrap around the supports for the tomatoes as they grew. I did ask but got one of those ‘you must be insane’ looks. Varieties we grew included ‘Tigerella’, little yellow plum, ‘Gardener’s Delight’, ‘Bull’s Heart’ (‘Cuore di Bue’), ‘Black Russian’ and ‘Costoluto Fiorentino’. I love tomatoes, missing their wonderful flavours and aroma in the winter months.

      PENNE CARBONARA WITH ASPARAGUS

      I often make this on a Sunday night when eggs can be particularly soothing and I want to cook something simple but delicious. You can replace the asparagus with either peas, broad beans or courgettes. This is one of my favourite ways of eating asparagus.

      FOR 4

      1 bundle of fresh green English asparagus, about 350g, tough ends snapped off, washed

      150ml double cream or g crème fraîche

      6 good-quality fresh medium eggs, separated

      about 30g Parmesan cheese, grated, plus extra to serve

      extra-virgin olive oil

      200g smoked streaky bacon or pancetta, cut into small pieces about 5mm thick

      1 smallish sprig of fresh rosemary, leaves stripped from their stems, washed, dried and finely chopped

      2 small dried chillies (bird’s eye chillies are good)

      2 fat garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped

      500g penne rigate

      salt and black pepper

      Put a pan of water on to boil which is large enough for the penne to swell while cooking and salt the water.

      Cut the asparagus at a sharp angle into slices about 5mm thick.

      Put the cream or crème fraîche into a bowl, add the egg yolks and the Parmesan, then season with salt and pepper and stir to combine.

      Heat a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil in a heavy-based pan. Add the bacon or pancetta with the rosemary and crush the dried chillies in with your fingers. Just before the bacon starts to turn golden, add the garlic. Remove from the heat if you are worried the bacon is going too far, it will continue to cook for a minute or so.

      Put the asparagus in a colander or sieve and blanch in the boiling water until just tender – about 3 minutes, then remove and add to the bacon in the pan and stir to combine the flavours.

      Put the penne into the boiling water and cook for 10 minutes until al dente (with a little bite). Add the pasta to the bacon and asparagus and toss together, then pour the egg and cream mixture into the pasta – do this off the heat or you will end up with scrambled eggs.

      Serve onto warm plates with a grating of fresh Parmesan – the grater held from above and quite high, and using long strokes over the finer grate, will produce the perfect texture – you don’t want dust.

      FERGUS AND THE TRIP TO THE ISLE OF BUTE

      Whisky, pig’s head and langoustine are the words that come to mind from this trip. My old friend Fergus Henderson met me at Glasgow airport with his driver, sent by our lovely hosts to pick him up as the guest of honour at their annual Eat Bute festival on the Isle of Bute. I hadn’t seen Fergus for a long time, so it was a complete delight to find him waiting for me in his bright blue suit as I came out of arrivals.

      We have shared a love of good simple cooking since our childhood days when Fergus and Annabelle, his sister, would invite us to stay in their parents’ house in Wiltshire. Elizabeth, Fergus’s mother, is an amazing cook. I was always keen to be offered some of Annabelle’s packed lunch at school (I particularly remember a delicious meatloaf), but it was their garden full of radishes and crunchy lettuce, new potatoes, leeks and carrots that has really stuck in my memory. It was the way of the house to cook the freshly picked ingredients simply, with just a little butter and then some dill for the carrots, or the potatoes just scrubbed of their dirt and put in a pan and cooked with a knob of butter; the softest lettuces were given a mustard dressing, and the cucumber was deseeded, salted and coated with a Dijon emulsion; then radishes, pepper hot and crunchy with salt, boiled ham with curly parsley sauce, some celery poached in stock – everything super fresh, bold, very English and courageous.

      Brian, Fergus and Annabelle’s father, is one of the most stylish men I have ever met – hugely generous, wonderful company and with a great appetite for life. It was Brian who took me to Harry’s Bar in Venice when I was seventeen to experience my first Negroni, when he came out to visit Fergus, studying in Florence at the time (eating tripe from the stall in the old money market in his lunch breaks). Brian and Elizabeth taught us the enjoyment you could get from a meal and its many different stages. It was civilised without being formal – delicious wines and beautiful ingredients cooked simply, Marc de Borgogne to finish, often music and dancing to end the night – heady days …

      On the ferry over to the Isle of Bute, Fergus went off and bought a couple of drams of whisky to warm us up while we sat on the deck, our weekend getting closer in the distance across the water. It was a joyful journey, sharing a whisky on the ferry over to a beautiful Scottish island with my old friend.

      A festive dinner in honour of Fergus was held that evening, with various courses cooked by Skye Gyngell, Jeremy Lee and Rory O’Connell. Then, the following day at the festival, Fergus was giving a demonstration on cooking a whole pig’s head (which he does with such charm and simple instruction), and everyone was diving in at the end to tear off a piece. Huge plates of local poached langoustines were had for lunch afterwards with chilled wine, and then dinner and energetic reels to finish off the night.

LANGOUSTINES WITH MINER’S LETTUCE (WINTER PURSLANE), MAYONNAISE AND SWEET MARJORAM

      Langoustines have the most delicious sweet flesh – pale pink and more delicate than that of their larger cousin, the lobster. I will always order them if I see them on a menu, as they can be difficult to find fresh in the shops.

      The best, juiciest and plumpest langoustines tend to come from Scotland, where the waters are cold enough for them to thrive. These beautiful creatures are fished in relatively small boats off the Scottish coast from sustainable stocks with well-managed quotas. I am mentioning this since I would hate for them to become unavailable other than frozen, which is not the idea at all.

      Fresh langoustines need to be cooked when they are alive (although you can put them to sleep first by keeping them in the coldest part of the fridge, covered with ice and sheets of damp newspaper, for a couple of hours prior to cooking). My favourite way of cooking them is to plunge them into boiling water and then serve simply with a bowl of mayonnaise to dip into.

      FOR 4

      1

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