Pulling on a Marlboro and waving one expansive hand, Antonio Carluccio is telling a story of growing up in Italy in the 1940s. His father, who worked with the railways, was the owner of two pigs at a time when the Partisans declared that all families with more than one must give them up to the cause. "My father he thought that a whole pig was too much to give so he slaughtered the pig in the station waiting room overnight. When the morning came all that was left was sausages," beams Antonio, as large in life as he is on television.
He and his wife Priscilla Carluccio are in town to promote their latest range of books, The Carluccio's Collection, a project that is just one of a number of pots that the pair currently have on the hob. There is the Neal Street Restaurant, of which Antonio has been proprietor since the early 1980s, the range of over 200 Carluccio's products sold through their shop and over 130 suppliers (including Johnny Cooke's shop and Avoca Handweavers in Ireland), and sporadic television series on BBC. And then there is the putative projects that as yet have a life only in Antonio's head - a mushroom ballet, a series on Australia, a mini-biography of tales from Antonio's childhood . . . For all this, Carluccio is still probably best known as "the mushroom man", the eccentric Italian who initiated the English public into the secret hiding places of wild mushrooms in books like 1988's A Passion for Mushrooms and slots on BBC's Food and Drink programme. "The Italians they hate me now. They used to have the fields to themselves, now every restaurant has wild mushroom this, wild mushroom that."
Priscilla Carluccio grins and it's clear that Antonio is being entirely disingenuous. They are a great double act; he is wide of girth, immediately recognisable with his tight white curls and his lime green tie ("I put it on in honour of your country") and his passionate assertions about food and cooking in heavily accented English. She is dressed in severe black with a white, almost clerical collar, a cut-glass accent and a wicked sense of humour. "Stop doing that to my knee," she says to him, as the photographer coaxes animated shots of them over dinner in Eden restaurant in Temple Bar, "Or it'll have to be called `Mrs Carluccio throws her soup at Mr Carluccio'."
Antonio has been surrounded by food since childhood when his mother, from the Amalfi coast in the south, would try out dishes from other Italian regions than their adopted home of Piedmont, but it was Priscilla's brother, Terence Conran, who first lured him into a professional kitchen. "We were all on holiday in Sardinia and we only ate out maybe two times. The rest of the time we would take it in turns to create fireworks at home - that is what the Italians do best, shopping without a programme and picking up a bit of this, a bit of that to make a meal. Anyway, her brother asked me to take over as managing director of the Neal Street Restaurant and a few years later I bought it from him."
At this stage Priscilla, a trained photographer, was buying director and stylist of the Conran Shop in London and was to become creative head of design of the Conran Design Group among other impressive titles, before joining her husband to form the food company, Carluccio's, in 1991. It is very much her concept, from the packaging and design through to the business and distribution - in an uncharacteristic moment of modesty, Antonio describes himself as "just there for the tastebuds".
Still it is clear that Carluccio's is something they both believe in passionately. They make several trips a year to Italy to meet with their suppliers, who are predominantly also growers: "That means that they can bottle something as soon as it is ripe, it doesn't need to travel, it doesn't need sugar to preserve it. "It's ideal," Priscilla explains. "It is absolutely genuine" states Antonio, before explaining that although they now have over 200 products ("almost the complete Italian larder, we think"), nothing is let into the range until they are happy they have found something of the right quality. "We could have slapped Antonio's face onto pastas and sauces and made lots of money by now but it's just not us." They also refuse to supply the range to supermarkets; "categorically not," says Priscilla firmly. "Supermarkets are all about profit whereas we are about profit but also about passion." It comes as no surprise that both are outspoken opponents of GM foods and use as much organic meat and vegetables in their restaurant as possible. "We have to defend the independent producers and markets - we lose them at our peril," says Antonio darkly.
The books, one on pasta, one on fish and shellfish and so on, are satisfying square volumes that indulge the almost pornographic voyeurism of the true foodie - sensual descriptions of dishes such as insalata di moscardinini (baby octopus salad) or pesto alla Genovese, accompanied by gorgeous photos of tomatoes drying in the sun or big fish stews. Tragically, the photographer for the series, Andre Martin was killed in a car accident in January of this year. "He was a man who understood and loved food," remarks Antonio sadly.
The recipes are very true to Antonio's philosophy on food which is, as he puts it himself, "purist". "It is not necessary to change the way these things have been made for centuries, they work perfectly . . . Take pasta e fagioli, the typical peasant pasta and bean soup, it is something I always order when I am in Italy. With it you can check out the intention of the chef, you can tell whether it is made with love. I am glad I never lost my passion for Italian cooking because after all these phases for nouvelle cuisine and so on, everybody is now realising that Italian cuisine is a good cuisine."
Still, his purism has undergone some revision following on a recent trip to Australia, where the pair had been invited to take part in Melbourne's food and drink festival. They are more than enthusiastic about the food they encountered there, describing deep fried salmon skin as "just one of the lovely surprises that kept on happening".
"In Australia," Antonio says enthusiastically, "there is a fusion of cuisines, Asian and so on, that in that particular place, is Australian cuisine." He would like to do a television series about the origins of this Australian fusion - "an investigation into how it came about".
It will be difficult to find time. Antonio is still a constant presence in the restaurant, there are four more of the Carluccio's Collection out in August and there are still the plans for the book of Antonio's tales of growing up in Italy and the mushroom ballet. Ah yes, the mushroom ballet: "It will be a children's story of all the different mushrooms, I have talked about it to so many journalists they now begin to ask me where it is. Priscilla's nephew (designer Jasper Conran) wants to do the costumes, Andre Previn wants to do the music and Lord Sainsbury with his love of dance and opera wants to pay for it. It will be so much fun." Priscilla interjects a little worriedly, "If you're going to write about this, perhaps you should say that nobody has signed anything - this is restaurant talk." Antonio waves a laconic hand and says philosophically "It will happen."
The Carluccio's Collection of Pasta; Fish and Shellfish; Antipasti and Vegetables and Salads are published by Quadrille priced £6.99 each in the UK