Sample text from Under the Olive Tree - Cooking is in my Blood.

My grandfather, Ettore Biaggi, known to us as Nonnino, had a famous restaurant in Lugano called Ristorante Biaggi, It had been founded by his father in 1882, the year the railway line from the north reached Lugano. As a young man, Nonnino trained in the grand hotels in London, Paris and St Petersburg.

The guest book of the restaurant was known as the Libro d’Oro, the golden book. In it you can see a procession of names of the great, good and notorious of the day - from the Aga Khan to Mussolini, and King Farouk of Egypt. My mother grew up living over restaurant. Despite being surrounded by the day-to-day business of food preparation, she did not learn to cook as a child because all the family’s meals came from the restaurant’s kitchen.

When she became engaged to my father, she asked the chef, Julio Casella, to teach her the basics of culinary survival. He was so painfully shy that, instead, Nonnino had to write out his recipes in an exercise book, which I still have. My mother inherited her fathers creativity and became a wonderful cook placing her love for food at the centre of our family life...