Antonio Carluccio has recipes for a good life

Little unnerves famous chef Antonio Carluccio, including his appearance at the Oxford Literary Festival. “It will be a novelty for me, but I won’t prepare. When you reach the age of 77, either you know it or you don’t and I know it,” he chuckles.

Carluccio is as personable as ever, but seems more relaxed, and happier to sit back and chew the fat, without the weight of his empire resting on his broad shoulders. And while the past few years have been tough (his 28-year marriage to Priscilla, his third wife and business partner, came to an end and they sold their restaurant chain Carluccio’s in 2010), he’s continuing to grasp life with both hands.

He’s also back in the BBC fold under the guise of Two Greedy Italians, which sees him pottering around Italy eating, drinking and cooking with Gennaro Contaldo, the next series having just been recommissioned.

“I grew up in the south of Italy in the same area as Contaldo, on the Amalfi Coast, and then my family moved up north and I grew up there, but of course my mother brought all her family recipes with her so I was brought up eating incorrect regional cuisine,” he laughs.

The pair met when Contaldo worked at Carluccio's Neal Street Restaurant in London’s Covent Garden “before he went off to become the father of Jamie, who also started in my restaurant,” Carluccio points out. “We didn’t talk so much to each other after that but then we thought ‘OK we know each other very well’ and we got through that.”

The result is the Two Greedy Italians: “which is lots of impromptu talking and acting, reality,” Carluccio laughs, “real lives, because for me it’s about making something we can all make and eat, without all the appliances that professional chefs have, not making dust like Hix and Heston.”

Carluccio has made a career out of just this; simple ingredients, gentle recipes and introducing us to his national cuisine. “That’s where Italian food comes from, from the resources that you have and using all the ingredients, taking pleasure in eating and sharing it.”

So what was the UK’s food like when he arrived here aged 21? “I remember stopping along the motorway and being served these grey balls before realising they were mushrooms,” he says shaking his head at the memory, “and my heart felt heavy and sad.”

His first of 20 cookery books was therefore on mushrooms, but then it’s easy to forget that Carluccio was one of the originals, standing alongside the likes of Raymond Blanc to transform our culinary wasteland. “I don’t believe so much in celebrity chefs,” he says in his thick Italian accent. “It attracts people for the wrong reasons. It shouldn’t be about red carpets and parties, it should be about passion.

“But I do remember greats like Keith Floyd. I remember sharing a bottle and half of whisky with him. Lovely man but it was interesting to see how he was dealing with the celebrity side of things.”

Carluccio too has struggled with his own success, but has since made peace with himself: “Our lives are made up of bits and pieces and I have dealt with them, so I’ve got nothing to hide. I’ve written my biography so everything is already out there and I’m happy to talk about it.”

It must have been tempting though to retire to Italy and sit out his years in the sunshine? “Now I’m 77 my horizons have widened and London is so cosmopolitan while the Italian mentality is a bit bourgeois. Italians don’t know their limitations so tend to be quite self centred.

“But I am still very Italian. I still have my Italian passport and visit all the time. I feel no necessity to change that. And I like the Italian’s style – their lifestyle, fashion, art, music, it all came from Italy and then spread through the world and I feel part of that, so maybe I shouldn’t analyse it too much,” he says.

And anyway, he can’t abandon the cause yet. “That’s the point. As a child you get knowledgeable about food by eating with your family and listening to the discussions about cooking. So when I left to go to university in Vienna, I wanted to prepare the food my mamma made, and then it came to my mind that I could be ambassador for Italian food, which is why I came over to the UK 50 years ago.”

Not that we are out of the woods yet: “I was in hospital a few years ago and the food was truly dreadful. I couldn’t eat it, it was so horrible – one of the best hospitals in London and yet no one wants to eat. It was loveless, passionless,” he despaired.

But with 290 Italian regions to choose from Carluccio will never run out of ideas. “I still like to experiment, and just as a note can create a whole musical piece, it’s the same with food. So I will never retire, not until my palate and taste buds give up the ghost, and until then I will carry on being myself and teaching people about food. I’m more than happy with my lot in life.”

Donald Sloan, of Oxford Brookes University, is joined by philosopher Julian Baginni, and two of the UK’s most admired chefs, Antonio Carluccio and Michael Caines, to explore our relationship with food in Virtues of the Table on Tuesday March 25 at 4pm at Corpus Christi College. Box office on 0870 3431001. See oxfordliteraryfestival.orghttp://oxfordliteraryfestival.org

Antonio Carluccio's new book, Pasta, is out now (Quadrille, £20)