If the 55-year-old chef Giorgio Locatelli suddenly seems everywhere– as a judge on the Bake Off rival, The Big Family Cooking Showdown, which began on BBC2 last week; promoting a new cookbook, Made at Home, his first for six years; the return in the new year of his much-loved travel documentaries with art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon – there’s a reason for that. It has come from a plan he made almost three years ago, with his wife and business partner Plaxy, when he thought his career was over.
In November 2014, Locanda Locatelli, his Michelin-starred restaurant in central London, blew up. There was a gas leak and, on a busy Friday night, a huge explosion. One person was trapped under a collapsed wall, but there were no serious injuries. For months, there was no water and electricity and the restaurant had to stay closed. Locatelli knew that he should probably fold the business, make his staff redundant. But Christmas was coming up, and some of his team had been with him for 12 years, since the restaurant opened.
“My hair turned white in three days,” says Locatelli, sitting on a smart, leather banquette in the restaurant, which eventually reopened four months after the blast. “The stress was enormous.”
“We nearly lost our house, we nearly lost everything,” adds Plaxy Locatelli. “Every single day we talked about packing it in. When we were finally allowed back in the restaurant, it was like seeing the Titanic. You know those shots where it all looks perfect, but it’s under the water?”
“There was a woman who was having tagliatelle with mushrooms,” remembers Giorgio. “She was from Italy and she called to say, ‘I’m only coming to London if you have the tagliatelle with mushrooms’ – because she’d had it the year before when we were at Frieze [art fair]. So we made it for her and then, boom! Everybody out and she left the tagliatelle with mushrooms with the fork in it.”
In the aftermath, Giorgio and Plaxy made a couple of decisions. One, get a dog. “Giorgio was rudderless,” explains Plaxy. And second, they would, in finance-speak, diversify the portfolio. For years, BBC producers had been nagging Giorgio to do more television work, but he’d always resisted. He was a serious chef and besides, he hated being away from the kitchen for too long.
“This is the first time we’ve said yes to everything,” says Plaxy. “Seriously, it’s been 20 years of saying, ‘Giorgio can’t do this, can’t do that.’ But it’s now become much more accepted, you’ve got proper chefs like Michel Roux doing it and you think, ‘Actually, why do we keep saying no?’”
The immediate result of this change of heart is The Big Family Cooking Showdown. When the idea first came up, Giorgio wasn’t sure if it was for him. The concept is that 16 teams of three family members go head-to-head in a series of challenges, both at home and in the Showdown barn. “No one invites us for dinner, so we don’t know what people eat!” Giorgio exclaims. He also freely admits to living in “a bubble” where ingredients are concerned: his daughter Margherita has a bottle of 15-year-old balsamic vinegar in her cupboard at university.
Was he surprised then? “I was really surprised sometimes,” Giorgio says. “I was very reassured sometimes, and I was fucking shocked sometimes! The dynamics were very different. There were these three sisters and they were like a fucking army! They are used to cooking for 40 people, when the family gets together, so when they came in the kitchen they were like, bam, bam, bam, bam. And there was this unbelievable house of people who were dancing all the time. We left and we looked back in the window and they were still dancing!”
Locatelli is so effervescent and good-natured, it’s hard to imagine him tearing apart these well-meaning home cooks. He smiles, “I think Rosemary [Shrager, the other judge] was a bit harsher than me. She kept on saying to me, ‘I’m bad cop, you’re good cop! I don’t want to be bad cop.’ And I’d go, ‘Well, I’m not telling you what to say!’”
“I know the feeling,” chips in Plaxy.
“But you know,” Giorgio continues, “I’m able to put my chef hat on and say, ‘This is not good.’ There were tears sometimes.”
Who knows if the show will capture the nation’s imagination in the way that Bake Off did, but Plaxy suspects that her husband will have little problem being in the limelight. “He absolutely loves being in front of a camera,” she says. “Ever since I’ve known him, as soon as someone gets a camera out he starts posing.”
Giorgio guffaws: “There’s hundreds of pictures of me when I was little, as soon as the camera came out I’d be like this” – he flexes his biceps like a strongman. “I had no muscles, I was skinny like anything.”
“The other thing that’s very interesting,” Plaxy goes on, “is that every photograph that’s ever taken of him, he looks at it and he’ll go, ‘Looking good.’ There’s not one photograph he will ever say, ‘I don’t look great in that.’ He always goes, ‘Looking goooood!’”
Phase two of “world domination”, as the Locatellis call it, tongue firmly in cheek, is the not-remotely-small matter of a new book. Giorgio does not do cookbooks: he does hulking encyclopedias. Made at Home is his third and they have all been instant classics, books that you open and know within minutes that you will own, liberally splattered with passata and olive oil, for the rest of your life.
Made at Home is exactly what it sounds like: dishes that he makes for Plaxy and their two children in north London; recipes cribbed from the restaurant in northern Italy that his grandfather opened in 1963. Giorgio has also included the meals he likes to make when they go on holiday to Sicily or Puglia, where “there’s nothing, there’s two knives and I have to create the whole thing”. The book has been a lifetime in the making.
“Publishers prefer to have shorter books with 100 recipes and one every year,” says Giorgio. “But you know, I never include a recipe I haven’t cooked more than a couple of hundred times. Or they have been sold in the restaurant, and I’ll have cooked them even more than a couple of hundred times. It will be a couple of thousand times.”
Sometimes when great chefs do home-cooking guides, you have to suspend disbelief: you don’t eat fishfingers, Gordon! For the Locatellis, however, eating at home has been an essential part of their lives since Margherita was born 21 years ago. She has anaphylaxis and is allergic to around 600 different ingredients. “When Jack was small, we took him to Chinese restaurants, to Indian, Thai, he ate everything,” says Giorgio. “But when Margherita comes that was it, that was the end of restaurants. We’ve never been to a restaurant ever again.”
“It’s not fancy, but actually it’s what we eat,” says Plaxy. “We get that a lot at the restaurant. People come in here and say, ‘But this is just like eating Italian food cooked at home.’”
“And that’s the best compliment,” smiles Giorgio. “Thank you.”
It has been an intense year. The new run of Italy Unpacked, Giorgio’s show with Graham-Dixon, focuses on cities: two-hour guides to Rome, Florence and Naples. “Rome was incredible,” says Giorgio. “Up in the morning at 5am, filming around Rome with the Vespa. I was driving and thinking, ‘People are paying me to do this – it is incredible!’ I’d have never thought in my life I’d get paid to hang around on a Vespa with this prick on the back.”
He’s joking again; while he concedes that he and Graham-Dixon are “very different people”, there is obvious fondness there and that underpins the dolce vita aspect of the series. “I’ve never seen anyone with his passion for those visual things,” says Giorgio. “He’ll be talking in front of the camera about this Caravaggio and suddenly just start to cry. Obviously I can feel emotion for my food, but to cry when you’re looking at a painting, wow.”
Discussion of Italy Unpacked leads on to Brexit, about which most of the Locatellis’ thoughts are unpublishable. For Giorgio, who still only holds an Italian passport, but has lived in Britain on and off since 1985, the result of the referendum was disappointing and confounding. He remembers working at the Savoy in the 1980s and being asked by the head chef to find mozzarella because Luciano Pavarotti was having lunch there. There was only one delicatessen – Camisa & Son in Soho – that sold fior di latte and buffalo mozzarella.
“Now, in the supermarket, the Italian selection is enormous,” he fumes. “This is what Europe has done, it’s closed the gap between Italy and England. France as well. Everyone says, ‘All this legislation…’ This legislation makes us understand what the fuck is in the packet! And the EU has done so much for the agriculture of this country. When we unplug, you’re going to see what’s going to happen. They are going to really suffer.”
Giorgio’s needed for the lunch service at Locanda Locatelli, but before he goes, I’m curious to know if that woman ever had her tagliatelle with mushrooms. “She did,” he says. “One year after the explosion, we invited everyone back for the night. And she flew in and had the tagliatelle.” When Roberto, the maître d’, put the plate down in front of her, his hand wobbled theatrically, a hammy nod to 12 months earlier. Giorgio laughs, “When you come here, you are not just buying the meal, you’re buying conviviality, you’re buying a memory. And I think that we’re good at that.”
Five recipes from Giorgio Locatelli’s Made at Home
Leg of lamb with peppers and mint
This is a very colourful, spring-like way to roast lamb. Red wine gives a great depth of flavour, but you could use white if you prefer, and some extra chopped fresh mint scattered over just before carving really heightens the fresh sweetness of the peppers and the meat. Serve it simply with some roast potatoes.
Serves 6
garlic 3 cloves
fresh mint 1 large bunch, leaves only
leg of lamb 1
olive oil 2 tbsp
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
onions 2 large, chopped
carrot 1, chopped
celery 1 stalk, chopped
fresh rosemary 2 sprigs
red wine 2 glasses (150ml)
chicken stock 2 litres
peppers 4 yellow and 4 red, preferably long Romano, deseeded and roughly chopped
Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4.
Chop 2 of the garlic cloves finely with half the mint leaves. With a sharp knife make 10–12 deep slits into the lamb, then push a teaspoon of the garlic and mint mixture inside.
Heat the olive oil in a roasting tin on the hob, then season the lamb and colour on both sides. Add half the chopped onion along with the carrot, celery, the remaining whole garlic clove and the rosemary and cook until the vegetables begin to colour, taking care not to burn the garlic.
Add half the red wine and bubble up to evaporate the alcohol, then transfer the tin to the oven. Allow to cook for 20 minutes, then add the rest of the wine and cook for 5 minutes. Now add half the stock and then leave in the oven for a further 20 minutes. This will give you medium-cooked meat, depending on the size of the leg, so if necessary, or if you prefer the meat more well done, leave it in the oven for a little longer.
When the meat is ready, take the roasting tin from the oven, and lift out the meat while you discard the rosemary and the whole clove of garlic, then pour the contents of the roasting tin into a blender.
Return the lamb to the tin, add the peppers with the rest of the onion, season, add a ladleful of the remaining stock and put back in the oven for another 10 minutes until the peppers are cooked but still crunchy.
Meanwhile, put a few of the remaining mint leaves (around 10) into the blender and blend, adding as much of the rest of the stock as necessary to produce a sauce consistency. Transfer this to a small pan and keep warm on the hob.
Remove the lamb from the oven and leave to rest for 15 minutes before carving. Lift out the peppers to a warm serving dish and stir in the rest of the mint leaves. Carve the lamb and lay the slices on top. Serve with the sauce on the side.
Green bean salad with roasted red onions
People often ask how it is possible to get so much flavour into a dish that is essentially green beans and onions in a shallot dressing, but this is a great example of a very simple salad that is all about the quality of the ingredients and the detail of preparing them. When a green bean is perfectly cooked, if you squeeze and push along the seam with your thumbs it should split easily. Then, a trick I like to do is to run a knife along the length of almost half the beans so that they hold the dressing, along with little slivers of shallot, almond and Parmesan. The contrast of the closed and open beans creates a slightly different feel in the mouth that makes the salad more interesting.
The real key, though, is the contrasting intense sweetness of the red onions, which comes from roasting them very, very slowly in their skins, but also relies on sweet, fresh onions full of juice to begin with. You can tell easily when you buy them: they shouldn’t look dry, and they should feel heavy. The onions we use are the cipolle di Tropea, the special Calabrian onions that have their own Protected Geographical Indication label, and are famous for being so sweet you could almost eat them raw. Tropea is on the coast looking out to the Stromboli volcano, and the best onions are grown south of the town and closest to the sea, where the soil is rich with sandy deposits that have blown into it over the 2,000 years since the onions were introduced to Calabria by the Phoenicians. Of course, you can use any other variety – the pink French Roscoff are also especially good – but if you can’t find really fresh red onions, forget about them; it’s better to choose some beautiful sweet, juicy white onions instead.
When onions are slowly roasted like this they can be used for so many other things, too; for example, they are good mixed with roasted vegetables, especially aubergines, or crushed into a paste and served on toasted bread.
The mixing in of the grated parmesan should be the final touch just before serving, so that it doesn’t get soaked into the dressing: that is very important.
I also made this salad for a friend who is vegan, and instead of the parmesan I pounded a handful of pine kernels with some extra virgin olive oil and just drizzled this over at the end.
Serves 6
almonds 120g, chopped
long green beans 700g
shallot dressing 3 tbsp (see below)
Giorgio’s dressing 100ml (see below)
parmesan 200g, grated, plus a little extra for shaving
For the onions
coarse sea salt 100g, plus an extra pinch
red onions 4 large
red wine vinegar 2 tbsp
extra virgin olive oil 2 tbsp
For the shallot dressing (makes 150ml)
long banana shallots 2, or 4 small round ones, finely chopped
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
red wine vinegar 75ml
extra virgin olive oil 150ml
For Giorgio’s dressing (makes about 375ml)
sea salt ½ tsp
red wine vinegar 3 tbsp
white wine vinegar 2 tbsp
extra virgin olive oil 300ml, preferably a fruity southern Italian one
We use this dressing often for salads, especially when they include roasted onions, sometimes on its own and sometimes combined with Giorgio’s dressing .
To make the shallot dressing, put the shallots into a bowl and season, then add the vinegar. Leave to marinate for 12 hours in the fridge, then pass through a fine sieve and discard the vinegar. Put the onions into a sterilised jar and add the olive oil. You can keep this in the fridge for up to a month.
To make Giorgio’s dressing, put the salt into a bowl. Add the vinegars and leave for a minute to allow the salt to dissolve. Whisk in the olive oil, with 2 tablespoons of water, until the liquids emulsify. Now you can pour the vinaigrette into a clean squeezy bottle and keep it in the fridge for up to a month. It will separate out, so just give it a good shake before you use it.
Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Lay the almonds on a baking tray and put them into the oven for about 7 minutes, moving the tray around and giving it a shake occasionally so that the nuts become golden all over. Remove the tray from the oven, allow the nuts to cool then chop roughly.
To roast the red onions, scatter the sea salt over a roasting tray and lay the whole onions on top, still in their skins. Cover with foil and put into the preheated oven for 2 hours. They are ready when they feel quite soft to the touch but still give a little resistance. Take out of the oven and when just cool enough to handle, remove the skin and cut each onion in half. Put into a bowl. Mix together the vinegar, oil and a pinch of salt. Pour over the onions, toss through and leave until completely cool.
Blanch the green beans in boiling salted water for 4 minutes, depending on their thickness, until they are just tender but retain their bite: they should open out easily if you split them along their length. Drain under the cold tap to keep their bright green colour.
I like to use the outer layers of onion for decoration. To do this, take off the two outer layers of each onion half, keeping them in one piece, and put to one side. Chop the rest of the onion and mix into the beans, add the two dressings, season and toss all together.
Arrange the outer layers of the onions around the outside of a large shallow dish to resemble a crown. Add the grated parmesan to the bean and onion mixture and turn it all together gently, then spoon it into a mound in the centre of the crown of onions. Sprinkle the almonds on top and finish with some shaved parmesan
Chilled tomato soup with whipped ricotta
This is a soup to make in the summer when you have plenty of almost over-ripe tomatoes; one for hot days and parties when you can have a big jug of it in the fridge ready to pour. If you mention cold soup, people think straight away of the Spanish gazpacho, but these soups are all over Europe. The addition of ricotta is what gives it a lift and makes it a bit more special, and also I would say this recipe has more pure tomato-sweetness, and is a little less aggressive than some gazpachos that are made with peppers as well as tomato – but if you want to add a little chilli, that is fantastic too. Like most soups, this is best made the day before you want to eat it. The use of a good extra virgin olive oil is very important. Preferably use a fruity southern Italian oil, but even if you use a strong Tuscan one, the acidity of the tomato will always help you out by neutralising the strong flavour of the oil a little.
We use shorter Italian cucumbers, which tend to be less watery and have a more distinctive flavour.
Serves 6
ripe cherry tomatoes 1.2kg, plus 3 for garnish
cucumber 1, peeled and cut into chunks
extra virgin olive oil 200ml
fresh mint leaves 2 tsp, chopped, plus some whole leaves for garnish
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
fresh ricotta 150g
fresh chives 2 tsp, chopped
Put the tomatoes and cucumber into a blender with the olive oil and chopped mint and blend until smooth, then pass through a fine sieve into a bowl. Taste and season, then put into the fridge for 3-4 hours.
In a separate bowl, whisk the ricotta with the chives.
Ladle the soup into individual bowls, then drop in small teaspoonfuls of the ricotta. Garnish each bowl with mint leaves and half a cherry tomato.
Baked whole fish
Cooking fish on the bone conserves the natural flavour in a more profound way, since it cooks from the outside in. The skin protects the most sensitive flesh around the bone, which because it has no direct contact with the heat or with oil doesn’t pick up flavours in the same way as it would do if you pan-fried it.
Serves 6
small courgettes 2, sliced
medium potatoes 3, sliced
onion 1, sliced
fennel bulbs 2, sliced
garlic 5 cloves, whole
green chilli 1, chopped
parsley 2 sprigs
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
olive oil 6 tbsp
lemons 2
rosemary 2 sprigs
large sea bass 1, around 1.5kg, cleaned
white wine 1 glass (70ml)
Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4.
Mix all the vegetables with the garlic, chilli and parsley in a large roasting tray. Season and drizzle with half the olive oil.
Season the cavity of the sea bass. Slice one of the lemons and put inside, along with the rosemary.
Lay the fish on top of the vegetables and pour the white wine over the top. Sprinkle on some sea salt and bake in the preheated oven for about 45 minutes, depending on the size of the fish. To test that it is cooked, insert the tip of a knife under the fillets and it should come out hot.
To serve, remove the skin and then lift off the top piece of fillet to one side. Then carefully lift off the piece
of belly fillet – this is where most of the bones are concentrated, so lift these out. Now you can run a fork under the backbone to release it and lift it out, then remove the remaining pieces of fillet.
Drizzle the fish with the juice of the remaining lemon and the rest of the extra virgin olive oil and serve with the vegetables.
Carrot cake
The way you grate the carrots makes a difference, so if you are making the cake to have with a cup of tea in the afternoon then grate them quite chunkily, but if you are making it as an after-dinner cake and piping the frosting, you might prefer the more refined texture of finer grating.
Makes 1 x 27cm round cake
butter and plain flour a little, for the tin
demerara sugar 225g
eggs 3
sunflower oil 160ml
olive oil 65ml, preferably light flavoured
plain flour 225g
baking powder 1 tsp
bicarbonate of soda 1 tsp
ground ginger a pinch
ground cinnamon 10g
vanilla seeds from 1 pod
carrots 160g, grated
pecan nuts 30g, finely chopped
pistachio nuts 30g, finely chopped
walnuts 30g, finely chopped
fresh pineapple 65g, finely chopped
For the syrup
caster sugar 100g
For the mascarpone and lemon cream frosting
unsalted butter 65g, softened
icing sugar 165g
mascarpone 100g
lemon zest of 1
To garnish
pumpkin seeds (optional)
orange zest cut into thin strips (optional)
Preheat the oven to 160C/gas mark 3.
Prepare a 27cm deep round cake tin, with a removable base: grease it with a little butter, tip in some plain flour and swirl it around to dust all over the base and sides, then tip out the excess.
In a large bowl, mix the sugar with the eggs and the two oils.
Mix together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, ground ginger, cinnamon and vanilla seeds, then fold into the sugar, egg and oil mixture. Finally fold in the carrots, all the nuts and the pineapple.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin and smooth the top. Put into the preheated oven and bake for 1 hour, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven and turn out onto a wire rack.
To make the syrup, put the sugar into a pan with 100ml of water and bring to the boil for just long enough for the sugar to dissolve and give a pale syrup. Take off the heat and leave to cool.
To make the frosting, beat the butter with half the icing sugar in a bowl until creamy. Add the rest of the icing sugar and the mascarpone and carry on beating until they are incorporated. Mix in the lemon zest. Leave to set in the fridge for about 30 minutes.
When cool, cut the cake in half horizontally and brush each half with some syrup. Spread half the frosting on to the base layer with a palette knife, then reassemble. Brush the top of the cake with the rest of the syrup and cover with the rest of the frosting. Decorate, if you like, with pumpkin seeds and orange zest.
Made at Home is published by Fourth Estate (£26) on 1 September. To order a copy for £21.25, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. The Big Family Cooking Showdown is on BBC2, Thursdays, 8pm
