The first in a series of extracts from Semplice Real Italian Food

Semplice Real Italian Food by Dino Joannides shares his fascinating gastronomic encounters with producers, chefs, cooks and fellow epicureans and his unique network of contacts and over 30 years of food related knowledge and experience.  Taking different elements of Italian cooking and exploring their origin and provenance, Dino will explode myths and expound facts surrounding some of the key ingredients in Italian cooking. There are also 100 delicious recipes to show you how to put your well-sourced ingredients together to make the most amazing, achievable and authentic Italian possible. In the first of three extracts from the book we take a closer look at  Vincisgrassi. Vincisgrassi While this dish has strong associations with Le Marche, the area from which it originates, for me it is also associated with Ann and Franco Taruschio, who for many years ran the Walnut Tree Inn near Abergavenny in South Wales.  Franco, who hailed from Le Marche, cooked a version of this dish, and with his wife created a convivial restaurant serving outstanding food and wine in the type of informal environment rarely seen in the UK. It drew people from far and wide, even before the Severn Bridge opened in 1966, and was a favourite restaurant of many serious gastronomes, including Elizabeth David. Since Ann and Franco's departure, it has suffered a number of false starts, but it is once again in safe hands - this time with Shaun Hill, who ranks as one of the finest British chefs of the last 40-odd years. I first visited the Walnut Tree with my parents in the mid-1970s, and later tried to eat there at least a couple of times a year. In fact, between 1989 and 2000 I must have eaten there at least 300 times because during that period, I worked for a Canadian technology company that had a manufacturing plant in South Wales, and most weeks I would go down the night before a meeting and book myself into a hotel that was a cab ride away from the restaurant. I had many memorable meals, but the first course I probably had most often was vincisgrassi. In simple terms, vincisgrassi is a lasagne in which the beef is replaced with air-dried ham and mushrooms. The story goes that it was named after General Windisch-Gratz, an Austrian who was based in Ancona in 1799, during the Napoleonic War.  The Marche region has many versions of this dish, all using a variety of meat and offal. However, the recipe here, based on one of Franco Taruschio's, is the version I tend to make, and it brings back many happy memories of eating at the Walnut Tree. Click here for the recipe   Dino Joannides is a consummate food fanatic and bon Viveur. With an Italian mother and half Greek half Corsican father he spent his first years in Italy before moving to the UK. Over the last 30 odd years he has traveled and eaten all over Italy in people’s homes, simple trattorias and the finest restaurants. Dino believes that good quality ingredients, in small quantities, are what make a perfect meal. Get your copy of Semplice Real Italian Food Book by Dino Joannides here